All of us are waiting for the next move, Willis thought, all of us waiting to react. The Home Fleet couldn’t move up to the Red Line without leaving the Nameless free to approach and attack Earth from the opposite side. The aliens couldn’t hold position close to Earth because they would leave themselves open to assault by fighters or the handful of human ships out in the system. Instead both sides had to wait in what were now starting positions. She could feel it, the whole solar system was holding its breath, waiting for the next step.
“Bridge, Coms. Signal from Saladin: execute jump.”
Willis looked around her bridge. They’d made it this far. Humanity had needed them to, but it didn’t need them to make it much further. I’m getting really tired of being expendable, she thought to herself.
“Navigation, send instructions to Helm. All hands, this is the Bridge, prepare for jump... and prepare for contact.”
___________________________
For a moment the fabric of space right on the Earth Red Line suddenly rippled, then burst open as the twelve starships dropped back into real space. As they crossed the threshold, each of the four tankers went full burn as they began to accelerate towards Earth. Below, the engines of every warship flared as they began to ascend Earth’s gravity well. Fighters began to spill out from the ships and orbital forts. On the ground far below, flight crews in bulky suits ran for their planes.
The Nameless FTL jammers shut down as the scout ships began to transmit. The convoy of fuel ships, the last desperate effort of a species they were resolved to destroy, had arrived and was accelerating towards safety. The race was on.
On Phobos, undetected, eight starships prepared for lift off.
___________________________
“Bridge, Sensors. Multiple new contacts bearing one, zero, one dash three, five, three.”
“Strength?” Willis asked.
“One hundred and eighty plus.”
They had got the result, which as an officer she had hoped for, but as a person she had feared – the Nameless were determined that no fuel would reach Earth. They’d just put in the bulk of their fleet. Could those tankers survive long enough to draw the Nameless into the trap?
“Bridge, Coms. Signal from Saladin, execute formation change, posture three.”
“Acknowledged,” Willis replied, “Helm, roll and present our port side and move us to position three.”
“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 wa
s 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.
Shaking her head, terrible doubt now crept into Willis’s mind. They couldn’t even be sure the Fast Division had even received its orders. Or that Admiral Lewis had decided to obey them. Could the fleet’s iceman have decided to follow his own course and deliberately sacrifice the austerities? This was the same man who more than a year before had hung her out to dry on the old Hood at Alpha Centauri. No way to know. On her display she could see the rest of the Home Fleet climbing up and away from Earth, but if the Fast Division didn’t arrive soon, this would be over before they could achieve firing range.
“Helm, make our facing one, two, zero dash zero, zero, zero, then go full burn on engines for ninety seconds and then cut power to them,” she ordered.
“Skipper?” The helmsman’s alarm was clear in his voice.
“Those are my orders. Do what you can with the manoeuvring thrusters.”
Black Prince shuddered and Willis was pressed back in her seat as the engines went to max power. As they slowed, the Nameless accelerated to close the range – perhaps sensing this was a last stand by ships that knew they were about to be overwhelmed. As that thought crossed Willis’s mind, Cetshwayo took a direct
hit from a mass driver missile. Two engines were blown clear of their mountings and flame wreathed the tumbling cruiser as her last reactor scrammed. Escape pods started to blow clear of their silos as her surviving crew abandoned the doomed ship. Black Prince shuddered left and right as missiles struck her on either side. Half of point defence went down, while B turret and one of the flak guns went offline. Within seconds, the latter came back on as the Lazarus systems found a surviving connection. On the holo, Saladin flashed multiple damage codes as missiles hammered into her, then the holo shuddered and the figures disappeared.
“Bridge, Coms! We’ve just lost the whole coms system!”
A glance to her left confirmed the communications group was sitting in front of either blank or frozen panels.
“Understood, restore if you can,” she ordered. “Report to damage control if you can’t.”
The communications lieutenant gave a jerky nod before grabbing his second-in-command and making for the hatch off the bridge. She turned back to the main holo just in time to see seven green blips appear on the display – right on the Red Line. Even though Black Prince couldn’t receive transponder codes any more, she knew those blips could mean only be one thing.
“All hands! This is the Bridge. The Fast Division has arrived. We’ve got them now!”
There was a cheer across the intercom and Willis found she was one of the cheerers too.
___________________________
As the ships of the Fast Division jolted back into real space, Deimos’s holo blanked out then started to refill as the computer absorbed more up to date information. The Nameless Fleet was still there, accelerating towards the remainder of the convoy escort. They were close to the Blue Line, still far enough out to jump, but moving too fast to do so! While a target was moving, the shooter would have to fire on several subtly distinct bearings, to cover the different deflections and compensate for any evasive manoeuvres. But with a stationary or near stationary target, instead of settling for hitting with one or two plasma bolts each time, an entire salvo could be put in. With their long-range missiles and fragile hulls, the Nameless had nothing that would survive that kind of beating long enough to jump. The tactical section was already working out whether their foe could jump before the Fast Division reached gun range. As Crowe studied the holo and measured by eye, a smile crept across his face. There were no missiles coming towards them, indicating that whatever else might be happening, the Nameless hadn’t seen them coming. But how fast could they react?
The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) Page 17