The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3)

by Edmond Barrett

  “It’s in a low orbit over the gas giant,” the rating continued. “Contact is only just coming over the horizon.”

  “Are you sure it isn’t natural?” Chuichi demanded as he hurried over.

  “Negative, sir, we are detecting an engine burn.”

  Chuichi pushed the rating aside as he leaned over the display. After several seconds he turned to Berg, with something almost like a smile on his face.

  “Captain, the readings are consistent with Nameless ships.”

  It took the contact another half hour to orbit far enough round the planet for Black Prince to get a clear view. It wasn’t ships after all or to be exact, it wasn’t just ships.

  “Two cruisers, Captain. Both of which appeared to be docked and possibly under repair. Three or four escorts or scouts, seven or eight gateship transports and an orbital facility. We’re still not seeing a space gate though.”

  “It must be here somewhere. Tell me about the facility,” Berg replied.

  “It’s big, Captain. It’s seven hundred metres long and appears to be a mixed installation. One end has at least two dockyards and the rest appears to be a hydrogen refinery. Two hydrogen skimmers are docked on the far side and there seems to be two more docking points on this side. There are also a lot of storage pods visible, at least thirty.”

  “Those pods would be enough for a fleet,” Chuichi said.

  “If they’re full, then yes. Still no sign of the space gate?”

  “There’s just so much material in the same orbital band, we won’t spot it unless it goes active.”

  “That is a very deep mass shadow,” Berg observed.

  This installation was better than anything she had even hoped for. This had to be the primary fuel source for the Nameless on this side of the Spur. If the Nameless fleet coming back from Landfall hadn’t passed through yet, then they couldn’t be far away. But if they got caught inside that mass shadow...

  “I don’t think there is a clever way to do this,” she said after some thought. “With a mass shadow that deep, even if we jump out right on the Red Line, achieving firing range on the installation will take a minimum of six and a half hours, with another six to get back out.”

  “That’s a long time in a mass shadow, especially as the first thing they’ll do is signal for help,” Chuichi grunted, “and we can’t use the asteroids as cover. By the time we’ll be close enough to engage the refinery, we’ll be well clear of them.”

  “I am open to suggestions, Commander,” Berg replied mildly

  “And if I had one I’d offer it Captain,” he said shaking his head. “It is a target that right now we can attack...”

  “Therefore,” she finished, “we have no choice but to do so.”

  Black Prince shook as she dropped back into real space right on the Red Line and immediately went full burn. The Commander was certainly right about the Nameless response. Almost before they’d cleared the jump portal, communications was reporting FTL signals from the defenders. An hour later Coms confirmed a reply but could offer nothing on the proximity of the signal’s source. On the bridge, none of the officers made eye contact. No one wanted to be the person to suggest retreat. With a mass shadow this deep, it would be hours before either side would be close enough to fire and every hour spent going in, would mean another to get back out.

  Ahead, the Nameless escorts had been accelerating towards them almost from the moment of detection. By contrast, it was nearly three hours after their jump in before the first of the enemy cruisers began to move. As it slid clear of the dock, the visual sensors could make out the front of the hull and see that it all-important cap ship missile launchers were opened up – and useless. The sensors could now make out that the second Nameless cruiser’s engineering spaces were also open. It was a target, not an asset. The escorts began to manoeuvre for position, spreading out, in order to direct fire along separate channels. Berg hoped it was a sign that they knew they were on their own.

  With such a long approach, once they were well clear of the Blue Line she allowed the crew to stand down from action stations. It gave everyone a chance to crack open their survival suits and get a bite to eat. She’d gone below herself when abruptly the main alarm went off.

  “Report!” she responded as she shoved her earpiece back in and headed for the hatch.

  “Captain, a space gate has just gone active, right on the Blue Line, at bearing one, nine, three dash zero, zero, three. New contacts arriving via the gate, we have seven, eight, nine... oh fuck me.”

  She didn’t berate the watch officer. She’d just reached the bridge and her first sight of the holo showed a nightmare.

  There were contacts both emerging from and arriving around the gate. Already, over forty were visible and more were arriving. Tactical was playing catch up but from the display it was clear they were facing carriers, cap ships, cruisers and a plethora of others. It must have been every ship that had retreated away from the Second Fleet.

  There was no escape route they could take that the Nameless couldn’t cut off, yet against that many ships, the Black Prince’s two flak guns be like would pissing into the wind. She’d led them into a massacre.

  “Captain, what do we do?”

  “Stand by,” she snapped back as her mind raced, trying to find some way out. But there was none. There was no route the Nameless couldn’t close down. That realisation was strangely calming.

  “Coms, prepare our message drone for launch. Give it a rolling update of our log and have it standing by to launch. If we cannot get out, then we may as well do as much damage as we can first.”

  Looking around her bridge, she could see a mix of emotions, on some fear, others anger and a few, resignation. In war, you might find people willing to be the first to die, but you’d find few willing to be the last – which was exactly what she might have made them.

  “Captain, the four escorts ahead are closing.”

  “Understood,” Berg replied as she carefully pulled herself over to her command chair.

  Her hands were shaking and it took her a moment to get the buckles into place.

  “Guns, engage with flak at maximum range. No point playing the long game, let’s just make sure we make it to the station.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Black Prince couldn’t put out that much fire but then neither could four escorts. Astern, the faster elements of the newly arrived armada were beginning to accelerate after them, likely beaters to drive them onto the guns of the rest of the fleet. The defence from the four escorts was almost a comfort.

  None of them fired more than three cap ships although each should have been carrying six. Even their supply of small dual-purpose missiles seemed to run out all too quickly. But they continued in, dodging and weaving on an intercept course. If ramming was the plan they never got a chance. When they entered gun range, Black Prince’s plasma cannons tore them apart one at a time and Berg knew that, whatever else, their deaths would mean something. The station was important to the Nameless.

  The enemy cruiser mounted the final defence, its few dual-purpose missiles contemptuously swatted aside, even as plasma bolts tore through it. Far behind, the new arrivals continued to accelerate after them, but they were too far away to be anything more than witnesses as Black Prince’s main turrets swung to bear on the orbital facility. Plasma bolts slammed into and through the structure and atmosphere jetted from its wounds, while fragments of metal tumbled away. On the bridge, Berg smiled as the refinery’s increasingly fuzzy radar signal indicated it was beginning to break up. As fragments large and small began the long tumble into the planet’s gravity well, they switched their guns to the fuel pods, successively and methodically riddling each one in turn.

  “Bridge, Coms. We’re picking up FTL transmissions from the enemy fleet and replies from the pursuit elements.”

  Berg popped her harness and pulled herself over to the communications console. The first signal had been short and sharp, the second much longer, then
a third from the main fleet.

  “Bridge, Sensors. The enemy pursuit elements are changing course and decelerating.”

  “Give me a focus on the enemy fleet,” she ordered.

  The holo focused on the activity around the gate. Ships were manoeuvring round into a single column. As Berg studied their movements, the first of them passed through the gate and disappeared. It took the Nameless fleet hours but eventually, their very last ship jumped away and the gate itself disappeared from the holo, leaving behind only icons for wreckage.

  “They couldn’t spare the fuel to hunt us down,” Berg said. “We have them.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Breaking Point

  8th May 2069

  “Oh come on, you stupid-bloody-malfunctioning-sack-of-made-in… ah got it!” Jeff muttered as he tried to get his camera to turn on.

  The damn thing had been marketed as ‘rugged construction’ but had been as temperamental as hell since being bounced off a bulkhead. Something had definitely been knocked loose and he sure didn’t know how to fix it.

  “Right, now I’ve got this thing going again I guess I’d better do an update,” he said to the camera as he got it hooked up and facing him. “I’m not really sure if I’ve lost stuff to equipment damage. Let that be a lesson to you kids, always back up your work!”

  He took a deep breath and sat up a bit straighter.

  “It’s now been about three weeks since we destroyed the Nameless gate station – Christ only three weeks?”

  As he spoke he unconsciously slumped.

  “Well I suppose the first week wasn’t bad, the Nameless retreated from the system. We got a message from the ships that crossed the Rift that they managed to destroy the Nameless planet on their side... Well destroy is probably the wrong word, depopulate the planet – that doesn’t sound any better really.

  “Anyway, it was a bad week for the Worms and, as I said, they retreated out of the system. We stayed and took the opportunity to deploy torpedoes and mines into the orbits of the system’s planets. If the Worms now try to jump in using the mass shadows as cover, it will be like jumping into a running blender. With that done, all we could do was wait. While we were, we heard a lot of Faster Than Light transmissions going back and forth from the Nameless fleet and their home worlds. Guess they were trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.

  “At the start of the second week, Nameless scouts began to appear in the system again, mostly well clear of the fleet and mostly they didn’t attack. I guess they were waiting to see if we would retreat of our own accord, but by the start of the third week, it was getting real again. Mostly it’s been small scale attacks. Jump in a couple of light seconds away from us, crack off a few salvoes and jump away before our fighters can get to them. It was every few hours at first, then up to every couple of hours, now at least once an hour, all steadily escalating. They’ve also attempted to build space gates in the system to re-establish their connection to their home worlds. Our recce ships have taken heavy losses and now the strike boats and fighters are having to do a lot of that work, because if the Nameless do get a gate up and running long enough to run a supply convoy through… well, then we’re boned.

  “Fortunately, they’ve had to activate a beacon for the ships crossing the Rift to lock onto and we can hear the beacon as well. But they’ve used some of their ships to send false signals, to try to decoy us away from the gate. So far the Home Fleet has always found the gate in time to roll in and flatten it. In the case of the second one, transports were coming through when we hit it. You’ve got to wonder what happens to a Nameless ship if there’s no gate there to receive them. Can they turn around and go back?”

  Jeff paused for a moment, lost in thought.

  “It’s not going all our way though. At first we could send a few ships at a time back out of the system, to rearm and let the crew get a few hours of sleep. Well, that’s a thing of the past. The fleet’s lost too many ships now.

  “The battleship Titan was the first major one to go – an entire battleship and everyone on it, just gone. She took a direct hit from a mass driver missile, which probably went through a reactor. One of my media colleagues, Catherine Mead, was on board. We worked together about five years ago – couldn’t stand her as a person but she’s... she was good at her job. Well, Titan was the first but she hasn’t been the last. A few ships have been lost outright and more have been damaged to the point where they can no longer fight.

  “Out beyond the edge of the solar system, where our supply ships are, there’s a growing fleet of ghost ships, broken warships that have been limped out there and been abandoned, their crews transferred to make up losses on those that remain. Here on Freyia, we had one guy transferred in. He’d had two ships shot out from under him in as many days. First time the alarm went off he hid in a corner and cried. I guess he’d just taken as much as he could. I hope the fleet is gentle with him because I don’t think anyone else is far behind.

  “I’m no strategist but I can tell it’s now just a matter of hanging on. We’re not looking for a knockout blow, not any more. Now we just have to hang in so that when the bell rings for the next round, we’re able to come out of our corner still bobbing and weaving.”

  The main alarm began to howl.

  “ALL HANDS TO BATTLESTATIONS! ALL HANDS TO BATTLESTATIONS!” the intercom screamed.

  Jeff gave the camera a tired smile.

  “Well folks, here we go again.”

  ___________________________

  “Fuck,” Crowe muttered as the main alarm sounded and he glanced up at it with an expression of personal betrayal. Wiping at the half of his face he hadn’t managed to shave, Crowe sealed back up his survival suit and locked the helmet into place. Survival suits never had the most pleasant feel but his was now a week overdue for a full clean and the sensation on his skin when he closed it up was... special.

  “Report!” he practically snarled as he pulled himself onto the bridge.

  “Multiple contacts across our frontal arc…” Colwell began to say.

  “I can see that for fuck’s sake!” Crowe interrupted, gesturing towards the holo. “What the composition?”

  Knocked out his rhythm, it took Colwell several seconds to mentally change gear. Crowe gritted his teeth as he physically forced himself not to snap again.

  “Composition is three cap ships, seven cruisers, twenty-one escorts or scouts. We have three carriers further back launching fighters with five more escorts.

  “Guns, status report.”

  “Sir, all weapons are at status green, standing by for firing instructions. Current flak ammunition level at sixty three percent,” came the reply.

  “Bridge, Sensors. Contact separation, we have incoming.”

  “Guns. Stand by to engage.”

  As Crowe spoke, the duty fighters were moving from their standby positions, down the safe lanes into blocking positions. Plasma bolts began to flash out from the battleships, seeking the larger cap ship and mass driver missiles.

  “Missiles now entering range,” the gunner’s voice came dispassionately across the intercom.

  “Fire,” Crowe said flatly.

  The barrage ship, which should have been on their side of the fleet formation, was away rearming, so it fell to Deimos to pick up the slack. On the display, blips for Nameless missiles began to disappear, some to be replaced by icons for larger pieces of wreckage, no longer under power but dangerous to anything that got in the way. Most missiles were shot down before reaching the inner perimeter but weight of numbers carried a few through, although none targeted Deimos directly. The cruiser’s point defence guns rattled at those missiles that brushed across the outer edge of their range.

  Nameless ships began to disappear as their escorts exhausted their meagre supply of cap ship missiles and jumped away. The larger ships didn’t have enough launchers to put out the weight of fire to force through and they followed their smaller brethren. The Nameless carriers were the last t
o go and, as several human fighters closed in on them, they were forced to abandon a number of their fighters. Twenty minutes after the alarm sounded, the raid was over. On the holo several ships were flashing damage codes that hadn’t been there before.

  “It is becoming an issue, sir,” Bhudraja said as Crowe completed his shave. “Chemicals are a poor substitute for sleep.”

  “And what do you want me to do, Commander?” Crowe said in an exasperated tone. “And for God’s sakes, sit down.”

  Bhudraja sat on the cabin’s spare chair, with a studiously neutral expression on his face, which was unaccountably grating on Crowe’s nerves. Well not unaccountably. After more than a week of little sleep and intermittent food, almost everything was grating on his nerves now. In that time, there had been several moments when all he wanted to do was to just hit someone.

  Mississippi now seemed like something out of another universe. By the end of the first week, people were actually starting to say outright that the combination of the destruction of Kingdom and the Gate station had been too much. When he’d returned to Deimos, he was practically killed in the rush of officers and crew coming to congratulate him – as if he’d done it all himself.

  They could hear the distant signal of the FTL beacon on the far side of the Rift. Maybe the Worms were already retreating – wishful thinking at its most optimistic. Even if the Nameless had been bugging out, they would have had to enter the Spur system to make the jump across the Rift. If they could launch off from anywhere other than the Spur, then the whole premise of the offensive fell apart. But beautiful fantasy would always be preferable to a harsh reality. Now though, three weeks in, with the tempo of assaults only increasing, no one was talking about the end. No one had the energy. Crowe realised he’d tuned out from his second-in-command.

  “We are losing ship efficiency, sir,” Bhudraja was saying. “That last alert, it took over five minutes longer for all sections to come to full combat readiness than it did a week ago.”