“We’ve just picked up what seems to be an enemy reply to the scout,” the communications officer reported.
Willis nodded. The word was out.
“Seven more minutes to jump out,” said the Navigator, pre-empting her next question.
“Best head aft, Commander,” she said to Chuichi, “that’s the build up done.”
“Yes, Captain. See you at Saturn.”
The main hatch closed behind the Commander and the bridge went silent. The clock continued to count down.
“Three minutes to jump out.”
“Bridge, Sensors. Contacts! Multiple contacts bearing zero seven two dash three zero seven. Reading one cap ship, seven cruisers, eighteen escorts.”
“I see them,” Willis replied. “Fire Control, stand ready for instructions.”
“Understood.”
“Bridge, Coms, signal from the Saladin. It’s the Commodore.”
“My screen.”
Dandolo’s face appeared.
“Captain, I believe we can hold out for three minutes, so we’ll keep Minstrel in reserve.”
“Bridge, Sensors. Contact separation, we have incoming!” the voice of the speaker rose sharply. Two-dozen new contacts appeared on the screen and began to accelerate towards the convoy. Willis looked around her bridge. The old hands who been with her on Hood were calm, but the new ones –
“Steady people, they only outnumber us two to one. Helm, roll to port and present broadside.”
The first salvo couldn’t be much more than a probe and there wouldn’t be time for a second before the convoy crossed the Red Line. As she spoke, the plasma cannons started to fire methodically up at the approaching missiles. Two vanished as plasma bolts slammed into them. As it approached them, the American fighters thinned the salvo considerably. The flak guns started to track and fire, the thump of the guns reverberating through the ship. None of the missiles made it as far as point defence range.
“Contact heading change, they’re coming to…”
“I see it,” Willis cut him off. The Nameless squadron was turning towards Saturn. They’d guessed where the convoy was heading. Not too much of a feat.
“Bridge, Navigation, we’re crossing the Red Line now. Fortitude is jumping.”
“Helm, take us in,” Willis ordered.
The respite of jump space lasted no more than a few second before Black Prince thumped back into real space. Ahead Saturn loomed large and the gas giant’s ring of starforts appeared on the holo along with the planet’s extensive network of moons. The closest, Enceladue, with Chinese surface fortifications on each of its poles, formed Saturn’s outer perimeter and was five hours away at best speed.
“Captain, the Dar Pomorza is dropping mines.”
Willis had always doubted the Nameless would attempt to drop in directly behind them. Missiles following up the convoy’s wake would have the slowest possible approach speed. Still there was no point taking chances and the idea of a Nameless squadron blundering into a minefield was always a pleasant one.
Black Prince’s sensors caught a brief glimpse of them before they dropped below the sensor threshold. The American fighters that had followed them down the jump conduit redeployed into screening positions, while ahead new blips appeared as the squadrons based around Saturn launched. There was also the Nameless picket, holding position well clear of the Saturn defences. It began to transmit immediately and this time the distant Earth transmitters weren’t able to significantly block it. Fortitude and the cruisers Loki and Osiris began to angle way from the convoy, as they prepared to jump away out past the heliopause to wait.
“Bridge, Sensors, contacts jumping in, bearing zero, six, nine dash zero, zero, nine, range one, one, zero kay.”
The cluster of red blips appeared off to starboard. Slightly ahead of the convoy and outside of their gun range, they were close enough for the Nameless to put down maximum weight of fire.
“Okay, we’re about to find out if Minstrel lives up to the billing,” Willis said to no one in particular.
“Contact separation, we have incoming.”
The speaker was calmer this time, but this salvo was a mix of small and large missiles. That meant scores of them were coming in, more than three cruisers and three destroyers could hope to stop, especially with lumbering transports ruling out evasive action.
“Minstrel is firing, Captain,” Sensors reported.
Willis flicked her screen to an external camera trained on the barrage ship. If this didn’t work out, then things were about to get very bad. As that thought crossed her mind, a glittering flash ran down the Minstrel’s flank. The muzzle velocity was only about fifteen hundred metres per second, low for any kind of railgun. With the projectiles set to burst at thirty thousand kilometres, transit time would be twenty seconds unless they met something first. The projectiles were small, but Black Prince’s radar was getting a good read on them as they slowly diverged from each other in a flat wall in front of the incoming missiles. Then they simultaneously detonated. A rectangular area of space became a mass of overlapping flashes just as the missile plunged in. Barely a quarter of them made it through only to run into the Minstrel’s next wave of projectiles. This time there was a rippling flash as the proximity fuses on some of the projectiles registered the missiles ahead and fired. The flak guns on board Black Prince remained silent, as the entire first salvo of missiles was obliterated.
“Bloody hell!” Willis exclaimed. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath. Minstrel continued to fire methodically as the Nameless threw three more big salvos at them, all with an equal lack of results.
There were further exclamations across the command channel. As the Nameless fire spluttered out, there were cheers on the bridge.
“Can we go off duty now, Skipper?” the gunner asked. “I think Minstrel has got this.”
Willis let the crew enjoy the moment for a few minutes before re-establishing command.
“Okay folks, let’s calm it down. It’s not as if these bastards have ever had problems with adapting,” she ordered.
Still, Minstrel’s performance had clearly taken the wind out of the sails of the intercepting Nameless. Pulling up the communication display on her screen, she could see FTL transmissions going back and forth from the intercepting squadron and the rest of the Nameless fleet. As they discussed, the convoy was getting further and further into Saturn’s mass shadow, while behind them fighters from the two carriers were jumping in. The window of opportunity for the Nameless was closing.
___________________________
“So they made it in?” Captain Holfe, Warspite’s Commanding Officer, asked.
“So it would appear,” Lewis replied as he drummed his fingers on the edge of the main holo.
The entire plan was high risk, but to have put the austerity cruisers into the role instead of more capable vessels struck him as tactical stinginess. If this was the last big throw, then there was no point holding back. Frustratingly, the relative positions of Mars and Saturn meant the Fast Division couldn’t really see the convoy directly and were instead relying on radio transmissions.
“The problem is,” said Sheehan, “they had to play their best card to get that far. Minstrel blew off the guts of eighty percent of her ammunition before they reached the outer perimeter.”
“But they can reload?” Holfe asked. “They brought ammunition ships with them.”
“Yes, but Minstrel will need several hours of downtime to do that, so no use in combat.”
“Yes, Minstrel has some glaring flaws and I don’t doubt the Nameless will be working them out,” Lewis said thoughtfully, “But their principal focus will be on the fact that by the time the convoy crossed the perimeter, a single ship held off – what, fifty of theirs?”
“Roughly that,” Sheehan agreed.
“So the Nameless now know they’ll have to throw in a significant number of ships to overwhelm the convoy defenders,” Lewis continued in the same thoughtful tone. “
That’s most, if not all, of their ships.”
“Getting out of Saturn won’t be as easy as getting in. And I don’t know if they can do it,” Sheehan said in a tone of grim finality.
“We could assist,” Holfe suggested. “Make Saturn the point we engage.”
“I think that’s throwing good after bad,” Sheehan replied, crossing his arms. Both of them turned to Lewis. He stared into the holo, lost in thought.
“No,” he said eventually. “We will not engage at Saturn. We would likely maul a squadron or two, but even under the most favourable conditions we couldn’t destroy or pin down a fleet. No, this is someone else’s script and we will, if given the chance, play the part laid down for us.”
“What if the convoy doesn’t make it?” Holfe asked. “We’ve got only a few more days of fuel.”
Lewis sighed and turned to face them.
“We take off and make for Saturn, Captain.” He smiled bitterly. “Unlike our colleagues around Earth, we will at least then be able to make our last stand with charged weapons.”
___________________________
The pipes pulsed in unison as hydrogen fuel pumped into the tanker Dos Amigos. Lifeblood, Willis thought to herself as she peered through the large viewing port. Beyond, Saturn dominated the view. A fuel skimmer slowly made its way down towards the planet. Although Saturn had been cut off, the fuel industry had continued to work gathering hydrogen. With only skeleton crews on any single facility, the pace had been slow, but with no fuel leaving for Earth or anywhere else, it had been enough to fill every one of the storage tanks orbiting the planet. Black Prince was docked on the other side of the station, filling her own tanks and Willis had taken the opportunity to stretch her legs under the excuse of paying her respects to the facility supervisor.
“Won’t be long now, Captain,” said a passing civilian worker.
“Pardon?”
“Another day to fill the tanks and you’ll be ready,” the man said cheerfully.
He was dressed in standard work overalls, but the flashes on his shoulders indicated he was a junior supervisor. His round face gave him the look of a man permanently enjoying a joke.
“I’m telling you, those bug-eyed bastards must have been raging, watching you guys waltz through with barely a pause. They know they’re bollixed now.”
Willis smiled blandly.
“Well, better be getting on. Don’t want to be the dickhead that causes a delay. Thanks again,” he added before bustling off. Willis kept her fixed smiled until he pulled himself round a corner and disappeared from view.
“Ignorance is bliss,” she muttered to herself.
“Not to be awkward, but when you decided to come here, you did have a plan to get back out again?” asked Colonel Bunton.
As the most senior officer present the American was currently in command of the various orbital defences under the umbrella of Planetary Defence. He’d called the meeting on the Starfort Cold Harbour to confirm the defender’s role in the breakout.
“We’re playing this one a little bit more by ear than anyone is really happy with,” Dandolo said. “If we’d got in clean, then we’d have had the option to simply make a straight run for the Red Line. Given that the Nameless have seen Minstrel strut her stuff, that’s now off the table.”
“I still don’t get why Fortitude and her cruisers didn’t stay with you,” Bunton replied. “I mean the firepower they could bring to bear…”
“The Nameless could bring more,” Dandolo cut him off. “But now that she’s outside any mass shadow, she’s harder to predict or monitor and far too powerful to ignore. She might be our smallest battleship but if she jumps in on top of them she could still make a mess.”
“Well don’t get me wrong, I can understand why Earth didn’t want to transmit the entire plan ahead of time, but we’ve got to the point where I need to know what you’re doing so I can organise our support. Y’know there are only so many ways out of Saturn to make a direct run at Earth,” Bunton said.
“Happily we won’t be heading direct to Earth,” Willis replied. When Bunton gave her a questioning look she continued. “We’ll head out past the Heliopause. Give Minstrel – and the rest of us – a chance to rearm and link up with Fortitude, before we make our run to Earth.
Bunton looked thoughtful for a moment then shrugged. “That’s all well and good but getting out of Saturn’s mass shadow will take those tankers at least fifteen hours.”
“It’s the last five that actually count,” Willis said. “That’s the point at which they can jump in around us, but we can’t jump out. So that’s why we won’t fly in a straight line.”
“The Nameless will see us make our move hours before we reach a position they can fire on.” Dandolo turned and looked out into Cold Harbour’s control centre. On the main holo a dozen red blips were visible, scouts now forming a tight picket around the planet.
“The carriers will start pegging at those bastards in a few hours,” he continued, “which will keep them jumping – literally as well as metaphorically. With gaps in their coverage, their fleet will have to be ready to move for an extended period. When we make our move the Home Fleet will move closer to the Earth Red Line. That will mean they have to be careful about getting in too deep, especially as the coms ship we brought with us isn’t coming back. It will stay here and keep a running commentary on where any Nameless units are.”
“We’ll spiral out from Saturn,” Willis said. That had been her idea. “Since we stay on the inside of the turn it will be hard for them to stay level for any great length of time. We’ll re-launch our torpedoes before contact and put them on station so that they’ll screen ahead and behind us. That combined with your fighters and Minstrel will make a close range jump in wildly dangerous. Basically we’re going do our level best to turn this into a marathon rather than a sprint. Minstrel has problems with ammunition but the same is true of them. There are only so many missiles you can shoehorn onto any ship. We’ll make our final break past the moon of Tethys.”
“Hopefully, they won’t expect that because in its current position Saturn is between Tethys and Earth,” Ozo said.
“And the European fortresses at the poles can give covering fire,” observed Bunton.
“That too,” Dandolo agreed.
“There is one thing I’ve been wondering about,” Valance said. “It didn’t come up in the planning, but so far I’ve been rearming from just the Remarque. I’ll pretty much empty her, but I wonder whether we should balance the load across the two ammunition ships, just in case one...” he trailed off.
Neither the captains of the ammunition ship or the tankers were present as observers at the meeting. All were Battle Fleet officers ,but in the support units rather than combat wings.
“No,” said Willis before Dandolo could reply. “The empty ship can be kept on the engaged side of the convoy as we move out, to protect the other.” She glanced at the captain of the Remarque. His eyes had widened, and he looked to Dandolo. The Commodore didn’t meet his gaze. Up to this point the ammunition ships along with the coms ship had been the critical ones to get through to Saturn so they’d been positioned at the heart of the formation.
“Yes. We’ll do that. The empty ammunition ship will join the two general transports. They will form an outer column on the threatened side of the convoy. The remaining ammunition ship will stay in the central position.”
Willis saw the face of the officer drop. He should have expected this, but equally they should have spelt it out beforehand. The general transports were civilian ships crewed by Battle Fleet personnel for this mission. But as vessels never intended to be put directly into harm’s way, the ammunition ships had their usual crews. The man should have had time to prepare himself, but instead he’d been allowed to think his part was done.
Their eyes met and she saw a man who knew he’d likely been handed a death sentence.
“Well,” Bunton said after an uncomfortable moment, “I can assure you Planetary
Defence will not let you down. Although I still think you should aim to get to Earth as fast as possible. I know your barrage ship will likely be empty if… when, you reach the Red Line, so likely will the Nameless. Heading out past the Heliopause to rearm sounds more beneficial to them than us.”
“Headquarters thinks otherwise,” Dandolo replied blandly.
“Okay. Both my fellow American officers and those of the Chinese installations have contacted me. They are proposing dinner before you leave.”
“Thank you,” Dandolo replied, “we’ll be there.”
As they left Cold Harbour, Ozo murmured in Willis’s ear.
“The dinner offer would be nicer if you weren’t left with the feeling the Americans think it would be rude not to give the condemned a last meal.”
16th February 2068
As the recorded words of Admiral Wingate echoed through Black Prince, Guinness looked around the engine room. They hadn’t depressurised yet, so no one had their helmet on and he could see their faces. Some looked shaken, other excited, most looked like they were still processing what they’d heard.
“You knew, Chief?” one of his deputies asked.
“Yes,” Guinness replied.
“Wow!” The young man pondered it for a moment then smiled. “Well if we’re going out, we’re going out epic!”
God bless the young, Guinness thought to himself.
“Well, this will be painful,” Willis remarked as Black Prince accelerated at thirty percent of maximum. With the six tankers fully loaded this was the best sustainable speed for the slowest ship. The captain of that ship reckoned he could maybe get up to thirty five percent of Black Prince’s best, but not for more than an hour.
“On the positive side, at least the Chief won’t shout at me for damaging his engines.”
The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) Page 14