Deimos was now holding position, at a right angle to the plane of the rings, her bow pointed up at a gap in the asteroids, though which the waiting stars were visible.
"They’re going to enter the rings." Hockley observed. "Are we going to let them get comfortable before we start?"
"No, as soon as they drop below the line of the rings we make our move." Crowe replied before his intercom onto a different channel. "Bridge, Fire Control."
"Fire Control here."
"Guns, we’re about to make our move. As soon as you’re able I want suppressive fire on the enemy cruisers positions."
"Understood. Be advised Captain, all remaining flak gun ammunition has been moved to the aft magazines."
"How much is that Guns?"
"Less that a hundred rounds per mount, Captain."
"Thank you Guns, stand by."
With all possible orders now given, the only thing left for Crowe to do was walk over to his command chair and buckle himself in. It was uncomfortable without the left armrest; the absent piece of the chair reminded him of his own injury. The metal splinter was still there, but the adrenaline must have been pumping because he couldn’t feel a thing.
"Captain. They’re entering the rings."
"Engineering, crash start now. Tactical and sensors, power up. Helm, all ahead emergency power as soon as the engines come online."
From astern came the familiar rumble of power, slowly at first, Deimos started to move. Had there been an observer standing on the upper surface of the asteroids, they would have seen the cruiser breech the rings, like a missile blasting clear of its silo, slow at first, but gathering pace. The plasma cannon turrets swung towards the distant enemy, within seconds their first salvo flashed out.
On the bridge Crowe was being pushed back into his chair, muscles in his head and neck complained as he turned to watch the sensor displays. The six ships inside the rings had been thrown into confusion, the two cruisers were breaking hard, trying not to go further in. But now their entry point was under fire, the Gunner wasn’t firing full salvos, instead the four guns were firing one at a time, keeping the point under an almost continuous barrage.
The cap ship and its escort, underneath the rings, had disappeared from the passive displays. It was impossible to say whether they had jumped, or their signals were simply being blotted out by Deimos’s engines. With the rings between them there was no way the radar could hope to pick them up.
Three minutes after their exit from the rings, the Nameless were starting to get organised. Their ships were spreading out as they started to climb, they’d come out simultaneously. But they were loosing time, distance and most important of all, velocity.
Deimos was out-accelerating them by many, many multiples, still inside the rings it was going to be at least ten minutes before they could go full burn and even begin to pursue. Then there were their missiles. With the launching ships going so slowly, those missiles would have to accelerate hard to start to gain on Deimos; their closing speed would be slow. The last few flak gun rounds would probably be enough.
It was nearly fifteen minutes before the Nameless once again breeched the rings, the moment they did they all fired, but by now Deimos was more than forty thousand kilometres away and still accelerating. The big cap ship missiles could barely pull more acceleration than Deimos, with such a head start they were never going to catch up. The smaller missiles did have the acceleration needed, but the overtake speed was still so low that they presented no problems to Deimos’s point defence. The only question mark was the Nameless cap ship but then a new set of contacts appeared, rounding the inner edge of the rings. It was the missing ships, now even further behind than the ships that had entered the rings.
Nine hours separated Deimos from the Red Line. The Nameless didn’t let up the chase, although even on only three engines Deimos continued to open the range. There was little that could be said or done on the bridge, on the navigation display Colwell had marked two lines, the Red Line, where Deimos could slip into the safety of Jump Space, and a blue line showing a distance from Phyose that corresponded to the Nameless’s jump-in. Six hours after breeching the rings Deimos passed through the blue line, they were now nearly two light seconds ahead of the Nameless but the Red Line was nearly a half as much again beyond. Navigation had run the numbers, and the answer was not comforting; whether the Nameless reached the blue line first or Deimos the Red, was too close to call.
It had been hard for Crowe to sit there and do nothing, he’d called for more power only to be told that everything that could be done was being done, and that the engines were already showing signs of overheating. But now they were under two minutes away from the Red Line; already the Jump Drive was spinning up.
"Bridge, Sensors! Four contacts have just Jumped Out
Crowe and Hockley exchanged looks.
"Guns, stand ready." Crowe warned.
"Bridge, Sensors. Distortion pattern, dead ahead."
"Range?" Crowe barked out.
"Uncertain- They’ve completed the Jump, range one point five light seconds, they’re facing away from us. They’re coming about. They’re firing!"
As the missiles closed on them, Crowe turned to Hockley with a grim smile on his face.
"Sir?" Hockley said.
"Now that Commander, was a mistake." He said. "They should have let us go. Instead they’ve told us exactly how close to a planet they can jump. Their ‘magic’ Jump Drives have limitations."
"Crossing the Red Line now, sir," Colwell announced, "we are free and clear to Jump."
"Make the Jump. Commander," Crowe paused as with a jolt, Deimos left Real Space. "I guess I can’t murder Captain Lukeman after all. Commander, the bridge is yours, I’m going to sickbay."
"Yes, sir."
Crowe paused again, his hand on the bridge hatch.
"Hopefully Commander, this will be the last time we run away from these bastards."
Chapter Twelve
Contact
31st July 2066, 21.30 hours Fleet Time, Alpha Centauri system
Dauntless hung motionless in the space between planets, nine and a half light minutes out from the Alpha Centauri star. With the engines powered down and running lights off, the old carrier looked more like a derelict than a functioning warship. Fifty kilometres off either beam, the carrier’s two escort destroyers Piranha and Hammerhead, waited equally silent. Astern, the two couriers that would provide them with a stand off strike capacity, waited in Dauntless’s shadow.
On the carriers bridge, Vice Admiral Emily Brian prowled back and forth like a caged tiger. Her walking stick tapped on the deck plating with each step, at each pass she paused at the bridge communications console and the increasingly nervous rating manning it. As she turned to make another lap up the bridge, her Flag Lieutenant opened his mouth to speak.
"Lieutenant Gore, if you’re about to suggest I go below and rest, I suggest you don’t." Brian snapped at him.
The Lieutenant’s jaw closed with a click; once the Admirals back was turned again he caught the eye of the ship’s first officer and shrugged.
The last two days had been one of intense activity, preparing for the arrival of the Nameless. With the ships cleared for action, the destroyers and couriers had proceeded to deploy observation satellites across the solar system. Back on Dauntless there had been much discussion where to deploy the carrier to launch against the Nameless, it was a complicated issue, with no clear right answer. The area that Headquarters had estimated the Nameless would jump-into, was a relatively small piece of the Alpha Centauri solar system, relatively small but, in practical terms, still huge. The first and most obvious position was suggested by the most aggressive members of the senior officers; take up station smack in the middle of the likely jump-in place, ready to strike within minutes of the Nameless arrival.
That idea was quickly shot down by the more cautious members; taking up that position would run a major risk that the Nameless would jump-in right on top of
them, a scenario Dauntless wouldn’t survive. Brian was forced to agree with them, there was no point making contact if they got obliterated within seconds. Emboldened, the caution lobby advocated a position at the edge of the solar system, well out of harms way.
That a fleet officer, in time of war would make such a suggestion, and that others would publicly agree, took Brian’s breath away. If the objective was to protect Dauntless, then the outer edge of the system was the place to be. But even if the Nameless arrived where Headquarters thought they would, if Dauntless were at the edge of the system, it would take the transmissions from the observation satellites, travelling at only light speed, nearly eight hours to reach them. If they came out somewhere else, like the opposite side of the system, it could be anything up to twenty hours. The Nameless would be long gone before Dauntless even knew they’d arrived.
"I will say this once and only once." Her snarl had been enough to silence the room. "We are not here to play it safe, to be cautious, to avoid contact or keep out of harms way. We are here to fight, we are here to show them what the fleet fighter wing can do!"
Who ‘them’ was she didn’t spell out, aliens, headquarters, it didn’t really much matter. Either way the caution lobby became more cautious toward her. The captain of the Samuel Clemens then mentioned that during their work on the FTL transmitter, they had noticed that the base inventory included a consignment of space mines, sitting in an orbital store. He had then gone on to suggest that Samuel Clemens jump-in just in front of the Nameless fleet and lay a minefield in their path. As plans went, it was ten out of ten for gutsy, the practicality score was rather lower. However they loaded about a hundred of the mines onto the Samuel Clemens anyway, for self defence. If the support ship found herself engaged by the Nameless, they could drop a minefield astern as they made a run for it.
It took hours of throwing ideas back and forth, but eventually they found a workable compromise. Compromise… even the word caught in her craw. The compromise position settled on was twenty light seconds clear of the edge of the estimated jump-in position. If the Nameless came out where expected, then the observation satellite’s signal would reach them in less than a minute, also Dauntless would have one of the Alpha Centauri stars at their back. No one knew whether that would have any effect on their sensors, but it couldn’t hurt.
Her big fear wasn’t losses to the fighters, or even Dauntless herself coming under fire. It was that they might fail to make contact at all. With nearly a dozen observation satellites deployed across the system and no other ships to foul the sensor plot, there was little prospect of the Nameless entering the system without being detected. But if they came out somewhere unexpected, it would take longer for the report to reach Dauntless, longer for the fighters to get into position to make their strike. With every second that passed, the chance that the Nameless would jump away rose. If she had to report to headquarters that they had swung and missed, that would be the end for fighters in the fleet. Better for the fighters to beat themselves bloody, than miss completely.
It had been easy to ignore such concerns while they were rushing about trying to get organised, but now with everything in readiness, the hours were dragging past. And with each uneventful hour, the probability that the Nameless had simply bypassed Alpha Centauri increased. Then what? They could set course for Earth, but it had taken Dauntless the best part of three days to make the transit, and it would take another three to get back. But at what point to assume they had been bypassed and turn for Earth? The worst of all scenarios was for them to jump for Earth before the Nameless arrived at all. But already they were well beyond the time Headquarters had estimated the Nameless would arrive. Was it time to head for Earth? She could send the destroyers back on their own, without Dauntless to slow them down they could make the passage in a matter of hours. But that would leave the carrier stranded; her old jump drive was only ever capable of insystem work, and hadn’t been powered up in years anyway, making it a doubtful proposition.
Her brow creased in thought, she turned on her good leg and started another circuit of the bridge.
Down in the pilots’ mess, Alanna Shermer stirred from her sleep as she started to get overheated. Sleeping in your flight suit wasn’t technically a skill the fleet taught its personnel, but it was something every pilot learned. Throwing back her thin blanket she rolled onto her side towards the barracks hatch, she opened a single sleepy eye; the duty pilot was sitting beside the operations phone, thumbing through a dog-eared magazine. Reassured she started to sink back into her slumber. A drilling noise threatened to drag her back to consciousness; automatically one foot kicked out and up, connected with the underside of Simon’s bunk. From above there was a snort, a grunt and some movement before the return to heavy breathing. Alanna returned to her dreamless rest.
The satellite designated Anton Five orbited Alpha Centauri, sixteen light minutes from the twin stars. Five times each second it took readings from its three big passive sensor arrays. Five times each second it compared its readings to its list of programmed responses. Five times a second, for countless seconds, the array took no action.
23.23 hours Fleet Time
The small region of space was still, in all probably it had been still since the foundation of the universe, but then there was movement. The stars started to ripple, like a pond after a stone has been thrown in. A starship blinked into existence, after a moment another appeared, then a third, forth, within thirty seconds dozens of ships were present. Immediately lean and deadly looking warships started to form up around the large ships at the centre of their formation.
Anton Five registered the arrival of the first alien ship at a range of four and half light seconds. As it had each previous time, the satellite compared its reading to its programmed responses. This time however a different set of responses came into play, power flowed to the radio transmitter and more processor capacity was dedicated to the passive array facing the alien ships. It waited for half a minute, then sent a two second burst transmission. Twelve minutes later the satellite registered a small object approaching it at high velocity. Again it transmitted this information. Thirty three seconds later, Anton Five ceased to exist.
23.40 hours Fleet Time
"Admiral. Admiral!" An insistent hand shook Brian’s shoulder.
"Hmm?"
"We’ve had a signal from Anton Five."
Brian’s eyes snapped open, as she jumped out of the bridge command chair, in the same motion she snatched the signal slip out of her flag lieutenant’s hand. The satellite had provided her with everything they needed to know to launch the strike, but the clock was ticking; with every moment the information was sliding toward obsolete. The message had taken fifty seconds to reach them, jumping the fighters to a position six and a half light seconds from the enemies projected position would take sixteen minutes, then finally it would take the fighters forty to fifty minutes to coast from the jump-in point to weapons range. All of this with no guarantees, that the Nameless would stay in the system that long.
"Captain O’Malley!"
"We’re already scrambling the fighters, ma’am. we’ll have the bays clear in thirty seconds." He shouted back.
With no orders to give, Brian could only stand impotent as the ship went to action stations around her.
When the operations phone rang Alanna was up and out of her bunk in less than a second. She was up one ladder and halfway along the corridor before she really woke up. Second in the line of pilots, she shinned up the ladder to the hub of the centrifuge. Once in the micro gravity of the main hull, she pushed herself down the corridor headfirst.
"Make a hole!" bellowed Squadron Commander Moscoe, at the head of the line of flight crews.
Crewmen flattened themselves again the bulkheads, as flight crews shot past them like human torpedoes. Grabbing the hand bar, Alanna swung herself into the access tube to her fighter.
"Good luck Alanna!" Simon shouted as he passed the top of her access tube. He was gone befo
re she could shout back.
Swinging herself round in the tube, Alanna landed in her seat with a thump. Grabbing the hand holds on either side of her cockpit, she stopped herself from bouncing back up the tube. Wasim Dhoni landed beside her in his own seat with a matching thump, Alanna slapped the controls and above them the cockpit canopy slid closed.
Automatically her hands went through the routine of belting herself and running down through the pre-flight checks.
"Flight board is green. Reactor at standby." She called out. "Disconnecting from starter."
"Weapons board is green. Communications at standby. Sensors, passive and active are green." Dhoni called back.
"Launch control, this is Caesar, we are good to go." Alanna announced as the boarding tube withdrew.
"Roger that Caesar, opening bay doors now." The launch control office’s voice crackled.
The big bay doors on their port side swung open. The launch bay had already been depressurised, so barely a puff of atmosphere escaped into the void. Then another voice came up on the connection to the bridge.
"All fighters, this is Admiral Brian. Remember, command and capital ships are your targets, make sure to distribute your fire, we’re only going to get one shot at this. Good luck all of you, Dauntless out."
Immediately the fighter slid sideways and out. Directly in front of Alanna was A for Anton, Moscoe’s fighter. The nose of the fighter was lifted slightly, so the fighter following wouldn’t be flying through the engine plume. Then the docking arm’s coilgun launcher, hurled the commander’s fighter forward, before snapping back into its bay. Alanna pushed her head back against her headrest, in her ear three sharp beeps sounded as a countdown, then Caesar was away.
On the bridge, Brian watched the fighters launch in four smooth ripples. The twelve fighters formed into two lines and took position between the two courier ships. Three minutes later they all disappeared into jump space. Brian sighed and rubbed her eyes tiredly, before turning and heading back to the plotting table.
The Nameless War Page 27