"If we get even half of them back, I’ll be surprised." She murmured to Captain O’Malley as she passed him.
After the mad rush of a combat scramble, the actual transit to a target usually seemed like a bit of an anti climax. But that had been training and this was the real thing. It was also the first time she’d done a jump-in a Vampire. The jump conduit walls glimmered around them bathing the fighters in a soft blue light, but Alanna wasn’t getting much of a chance to look at it. Unlike the modern Raven fighters, Vampires didn’t have an insystem jump drive, so they also didn’t have an autopilot capable of dealing with the gravitational turbulence experienced within conduits. In front and astern of her, the two lines of fighters wiggled like a pair of snakes, each pilot working hard to stay on station. Ahead the radiators on the back of Moscoe’s fighter were glowing red hot, venting what little heat jump space would accept. There was little communication between Dhoni and Alanna; both of them were concentrating intently on Caesars engine read outs. The flight deck chief had signed off the engines as good, but the chief wasn’t here now and Moscoe had spelt it out in the briefing; any fighter that fell behind due to engine problems, would be left behind. A death sentence for a vessel lacking its own jump drive. So both of them watched for any sign, of any variances outside normal operating parameters.
They were only due to be in jump space for sixteen minutes, but they were a busy sixteen minutes. Except in combat, flying a fighter usually involved programming in a route, then taking your hands off the controls. Alanna didn’t remove her hand from Caesar’s control column, not a moment passed where she wasn’t correcting their heading, or making a subtle change to their engine output. As the minutes edged past the two lines became noticeably more ragged. Alanna could feel the back of her survival suit becoming slick with sweat as she worked the controls.
"Ninety seconds from jump-in." Dhoni said. "Begin burn in thirty."
"Roger, breaking for jump-in."
Jets of plasma burned past the cockpit as they reduced velocity to get below the safe re-entry speed.
"Fifteen second, brace for re-entry."
Then with a violent jolt they were back into real space. The couriers immediately angled off. As soon as they had spun their jump drives back up, they would be making a jump to the far side of the alien fleet. There they would wait to take any survivors of the strike back to Dauntless. If there were any. The squadron formed back into two neat lines; a formation right out of the fighter play book. If each fighter could hide in the radar shadow of the one in front, the squadrons radar profile would be little more than the two lead craft. They burned their engines for six minutes to build up velocity again, before, at the command of Moscoe, they all cut their engines and began to coast in on silent running.
The term ‘silent running’ was of course a scientific nonsense; a left over from the wet navy, but the stillness of space was for those who had not experienced it, unimaginable. The only noise in the fighter was the quiet sound of Alanna’s and Dhoni’s breathing. Beyond that there was nothing, no hum of equipment, no light from instrumentation. They sat there in the darkness waiting. They were travelling at several hundred kilometres per second, but without external references it didn’t feel as if they were moving at all. The only thing to do, was watch the clock count down to the estimated time they would make contact with the enemy.
Captain O’Malley studied the watch set into the wrist of his survival suit.
"They should be making contact about now." He remarked to no one in particular.
Brian nodded without speaking.
"Contact," Commander Moscoe’s voice sounded quietly in Alanna’s ear, "Twelve by one. Looks like we’re coming in slightly below them. Transmitting visual back at you. Prepare for targeting data people." Alanna swallowed hard as her mouth suddenly went very dry. She hadn’t realised it but she must have been half hoping that they wouldn’t make contact. But they had and now there was no avoiding it, they were going in.
Alanna and Dhoni both turned on their targeting monitors. That was one thing to be said for short-range coms lasers, they might only be useable when in tight formation, but they were also undetectable by anyone not in the transmission beam and totally unjamable… bar blowing the sender or receiver out of the stars of course.
Alanna studied the image of the alien ships on her screen. The ships of the Nameless were certainly very different from the ships of Battlefleet, or any of the other known races. She couldn’t see any weapon turrets, not even for point defence guns. The ship that had fought the Mississippi had relied totally on missiles, clearly for the Nameless that was the norm rather than the exception. It gave their ships a sleek and clean look compared to the blocky warships of humanity.
There was no sign of any fighters among their fleet, and she couldn’t identify any ship that looked like a carrier. Didn’t mean there wasn’t one in there somewhere. There were too many ships too close together, their overlapping silhouettes were confusing the Vampire’s computer, it couldn’t decide where one ship stopped and another began. Perversely, the human eyeball was better able to interpret what they were seeing. For her part, Alanna was concentrating on reading the mood of the fleet. Gauge what state of alert the aliens were at. They certainly hadn’t been spotted yet, but how alert were they? There was an outer picket of escorts, deployed in a loose sphere, but the majority were clustered in the centre around several large ships.
It was irritating not to have direct control over what she was seeing, Moscoe kept moving the camera when she would have liked to have studied individual ships for a moment. The camera in Moscoe’s fighter focused on one of the big ships in the centre of the formation for a moment, then moved on, but it was long enough for something to twig Alanna’s interest.
"Wasim, are you recording this?" She asked.
"Of course, Skip." He replied.
"Wind back a few seconds, to that big ship."
"What are you looking at?" He asked as he worked.
"This." She replied pointing at the screen. "This big ship here, these things along the side of its hull, they look very much like hydrogen tanks and they run all the way down the length. I think it’s a fuel tanker."
"Hang on a moment." Dhoni murmured as he fiddled with the controls. The recording wound back again for several seconds, then stopped and zoomed in. "Here look at this." The screen showed two enemy ships close together, a thin boom connected them. "Those are without doubt tankers, they’re refuelling from them."
"Hell if we put missiles into them…"
"Yes, definitely." Dhoni agreed. "We might well get some very good damage from secondary explosions before the other ships could pull away. It looks to me like most of them are still waiting to fuel; if they don’t have enough reaction mass to go anywhere, that will keep them still. I’m seeing four of them."
As he was speaking, Alanna reached over and switched the display back to the live feed.
"Oh…" She said. "Moscoe hasn’t noticed the tankers, he’s looking at warships."
"That is our objective skipper, target warships."
"Yeah, but a fleet of that size. Even if we nail one each, there’s nothing stopping the rest going on without them and still having a decent sized fleet." She paused. "Wasim, give me a laser link to Moscoe."
Dhoni looked at her sharply.
"Skipper, sending a coms laser forward is risky, it could give us away if any of the beam leaks past Moscoe and hits one of them-" He said.
"Yeah. Do it anyway."
"Okay."
"Anton, this is Caesar, over."
The response was lightening fast."
"Caesar! Cut transmission!" Moscoe barked.
"Negative Anton, have identified four enemy ships as fuel tankers, sending forward targeting information. Recommend tankers as primary targets. Caesar, over and out."
Alanna cut the transmission.
"That’s going to cost us." She said, Dhoni nodded without replying.
The com link came
to life again.
"Listen up people." Said Moscoe. "I can see four tankers, we’re going to target three of them, put a wing onto each one. I’m designating them A, B and C." On Alanna’s screen a note blinked up showing which was which. "First wing with me, we’re taking A, second wing, B and third C. I’m going to coast us in as far as I think we can go, be ready to spark up your drives. Leader out."
"Well, perhaps he won’t shoot us after." Dhoni said dryly.
"He’ll have to wait his turn." Alanna replied as she rested one finger of her left hand on the button for start up and closed her right hand around the control stick. "Look, there they are."
Dhoni glanced up in the direction she was looking, there they were, just the engine flares at this point, but you still had to be very close to see anything with the naked eye.
"Are we all set there?" She asked.
"Yes, I’ve just tested the missiles. They’re all registering okay."
They coasted for another five minutes. Now Alanna could make out the light of the local star glinting off their hulls. Every ship looked confident and deadly. Alanna noticed her right hand was shaking slightly, she closed it into a fist until it stopped. Finally came the welcome sound of Moscoe’s voice.
"Okay people on my mark. Single pass, no fancy stuff." He ordered. "Three, two, one, Mark."
Alanna pushed down the button and heard the thunk of the chemical catalyst dropping into the reactor. There was the agonising second of uncertainly before the reactor roared into life. The control panel in front of her lit up as Caesars systems came back on line. Alanna slammed the engines into plus ten override and Caesar leapt forward like a spurred horse. With a smooth motion to her control column, she swung out from behind Moscoe’s fighter, giving her own targeting radar a clear view of the ships ahead. As her search radar came on, she saw Simons fighter swing out onto her port wing. All around them, was the hot glow of plasma engines going full burn as the squadron thundered in.
"Come on! Come on!" Alanna muttered to herself, as the seconds crawled by and every nut and bolt holding Caesar together started to vibrate. Every sensor the aliens had must be screaming by now, what the hell were they waiting for?
Caesar’s threat detection system finally sounded, sharp and shrill, just as the squadron flashed passed the outer picket. Several of the picket ships fired but the fighters now had so much velocity the missiles were left floundering in the squadrons wake.
Ahead of them, the knot of starships were only starting to react to the squadron’s appearance. The formation was opening up as individual ships sought to clear their fields of fire. As Alanna watched, there was a bloom of fire and sparkle of ripped metal work as two ships grazed one another. Then they started to fire.
At first it was only single missiles, then the barrage gained strength as every ship that could fire did so in earnest. Scores of missiles surged across space towards them. With the squadron going straight for the launchers, the closing speed was incredible. Dhoni fired off a spray of decoy rockets directly to their front. The rockets detonated five kilometres in front of Caesar, putting down a wall of chaff between them and the approaching missiles. All down the line the other fighters were doing the same thing. Caesar had two turrets, below and above the fuselage, the plasma guns they mounted now opened up; computer guided, the guns launched off a stream of plasma bolts at the approaching missiles. Alanna pressed the trigger on her control column, a stream of plasma bolts piped out from the fighters third, fixed, gun. She didn’t expect to hit them, but anything that added to the confusion couldn’t hurt. Dozens of the approaching missiles were destroyed or decoyed, but they were being fired by the score.
The threat detection alarm increased in tone, before Alanna could react, a missile missed them by less than ten metres and detonated half a kilometre behind Caesar. Alanna realised that the closing velocity was so high, that the missile’s proximity fuse hadn’t triggered fast enough. Not everyone was as lucky. There was a flash from behind them.
"Just lost our wing man." Dhoni announced bleakly.
Simon, Alanna briefly thought, but she had no time to grieve for a friend.
Off to their port side, another fighter had one of its engine pods ripped away and went into a flat spin before another two missiles smeared it out of existence. Caesar gave a jolt as something clipped them without hitting anything vital. The squadron’s loose formation had disintegrated, as each pilot desperately sought to find his or her own safe course. Alanna worked the controls of Caesar, sending the fighter twisting and turning. But the space all around them was filled with missiles, making the survival of any individual fighter little more than a matter of blind luck.
"Skipper I can’t get missile lock! They’re jamming our frequency!"
"Goddamn it! Switch missiles to manual!" Alanna shouted. "We’re going to have to fire open sight!" Above them another Vampire was obliterated.
Now they were in amongst the enemy fleet and fire slacken slightly as the aliens tried to avoid hitting each other. Out of the corner of her eye Alanna saw a Vampire, its port engine aflame, cockpit ripped away, continue straight and level into a maelstrom of fire, until it slammed into the side of an enemy starship.
"Target thirty clicks!"
"Roger!"
"Twenty clicks!"
"TEN!" The tanker loomed large ahead of Caesar.
"Missiles away!" She shouted.
Four deep thumps rang through Caesar, as the missiles blasted out of the rotary launcher. An enemy missile intercepted the first, the second corkscrewed away as its guidance system malfunctioned, but the last two ran straight and true. The two speared into separate fuel cells and detonated. Both cells were ripped open, the hydrogen fuel spilled out and ignited, in turn the fires triggered secondary detonations in the neighbouring tanks. Explosion after explosion wracked the tanker, as each fuel cell was ripped open and detonated in turn.
"Direct hit! Direct hit!" Dhoni screamed. "Scratch one tanker!"
Alanna didn’t have time to celebrate, now they needed to find an exit. To turn away would meaning loosing speed and that would be fatal. They had to find a way directly through. She opted to dive under the tanker she’d just hit. A few seconds later she realised she’d made the wrong decision. Relative to their position, the explosions were pushing the tanker downwards. Below lay an enemy warship. Its manoeuvring jets were firing frantically, as it tried to get out of the path of the dying behemoth. The gap between the two hulls was narrowing by the second, but she and Caesar were already committed. She found herself trying to push forward the throttle lever, even though it was already fully open. The gap was hair thin now.
"Don’t breath out Wasim! This is going to be tight!" Alanna shouted.
The hull of the warship passed as a blue blur, as Caesar flashed through a gap scarcely big enough to contain her. Behind, fresh explosions lit space as the two hulls ground together.
And then they were clear
"Holy… I think we took off some of their paint." Dhoni gasped.
"Stay focused, we’re not out yet!"
But the response from the outer picket on the far side of the fleet, was feeble compared to the holocaust of fire they had come through. Perhaps the aliens realised the damage had already been done, within a few minutes they were clear.
Caesar disappeared into the cold dark safety of deep space. Astern space was briefly lit by two pinpricks of fire.
After several minutes Alanna belatedly realised her engines were still running at plus ten and throttled back sharply. The sudden drop in the tone of the engines caused a cry of alarm from Dhoni.
"Sorry about that Wasim," she apologised, "if I left us on plus ten, we’d have used all of our reaction mass before we got to the rendezvous."
"Yeah, that would be bad." Dhoni agreed.
There was a silence between them for several minutes before Alanna forced herself to ask the question.
"Any of the others on radar?"
"Err… hang on." Dhoni�
�s wits were clearly still back there with the Nameless. "Not at the moment skipper." Dhoni replied unhappily. "I know I saw three go down."
Against such fire, it didn’t seem possible that anyone could have survived. Alanna could barely believe she was herself still alive. Perhaps they were the only survivors out of the entire squadron…
"Contact!"
Alanna jerked out of her revere.
"Friendlies?"
"It’s two of ours!" Dhoni replied with open relief.
By the time they reached the waiting couriers, another two vampires had caught up and formed a loose formation. The attack had taken under three minutes, and cost the lives of fourteen crewmen.
1st August 2066, 01.20 hours Fleet Time
"That one there, see it? That’s definitely a second reactor going up."
"Yeah, not so sure about that one though. It might be a reactor being scrammed."
Brian rapped her stick on the deck plating.
"Gentlemen, we’re on a time limit here. What is your conclusion?" She asked.
Captain O’Malley, the ship’s intelligence officers and Commander Moscoe, all stepped aside to allow her to see the main screen.
"We’re seeing two clear reactor explosions, here and here." O’Malley said, pointing to the appropriate areas of the holo. "They are definitely two of the tankers going up, by the size of the explosions, they must have been close to full load. This here is the third tanker, clearly well ablaze. We lose track of it from here, now here, there is a flash which might be it going up, or it could be a reactor purge, we’re not sure. Either way though, if they’ve saved the ship, they’ve had to dump the fuel to do it."
"So you’re saying, three of the four tankers are off the board?"
The Nameless War Page 28