The Nameless War

by Edmond Barrett

  "Well Ma’am, two are definites, the third is more of a judgement call, with only five fighters surviving there are gaps in the records, so we can’t be one hundred percent."

  "All right. Anything else?"

  "They sent an FTL transmission after the strike." O’Malley replied. "It was short, but it was complex, they could have sent a lot of data."

  "Have we heard any reply?"

  "No, ma’am. There is something else though. Over the last twenty minutes we’ve received transmissions from four separate observation satellites. They report groups, we think two, of perhaps half a dozen ships, jump-in, take a look around and jump out."

  "They’ve sent out hunting groups, looking for us."

  "That’s our thinking."

  "Anything else?"

  O’Malley shook his head.

  Brian walked around the plotting table to the main communications console. The bridge was silent, except for the hum of equipment. The officers on the bridge turned to watch her. Whatever message she sent would decide the actions of the Home Fleet. On paper Admiral Lewis might be the CinC, but here and now she was its real commander. Make the wrong choice and the war might be over very, very quickly. Was the loss of the three tankers, enough to hold the Nameless in position for three hours? They didn’t have time or even the capacity to carry out follow up recon. A few seconds of poor quality digital imagery, wasn’t much to base a decision that could effect everything.

  "Communications," she said after a long pause, "send the following message to the FTL on Alpha Centauri Three for relay to Earth: Have made contact with enemy, stop, estimate three of four enemy tankers destroyed, stop, recommend home fleet attack, stop, enemy position, ten point four minutes from hub, bearing zero, four, three dash zero, zero, three, message end. Send it now please."

  Turning back to the bridge Brian saw a range of emotions on the faces of her crew, fear, worry and relief.

  "What now, Admiral?" O’Malley asked.

  "Assuming they make contact, Captain O’Malley, once the Home Fleet arrives, we are going to move into position to carry out supporting strikes with what’s left of the squadron."

  The executor was an old tradition among military pilots; each member of the flight crew would nominate someone from another fighter as their executor. If someone was killed, whether it be on operations or dirtside, the executor went through their stuff. To make sure anything that might tarnish the memory of the deceased, like say… any sign of a second girlfriend, was quietly removed before it was sent back to parents or spouses. It wasn’t something mentioned in any of the fleets manuals and wasn’t really talked about, even in private, but even in a training outfit like Dauntless’s squadron, executors had been nominated.

  In the case of Flying Officer Simon Scammell, there was nothing so sordid. Among his personal possessions, there was a few changes of clothing and the post card from the Armstrong Lunar station. Alanna could remember him cursing when he realised that he had forgotten to post it. His emails were mostly to and from his sisters and parents. The rest were from old college friends. One in particular caught Alanna’s eye, someone called Clare, planning a party to celebrate his successful commissioning as a fighter pilot.

  Alanna set the email account to download to Fleet Headquarters upon their return and logged out. His physical belongings she packed up and took to storage. With more casualties than survivors, some of the designated executors were themselves among the dead. That had meant that some of them had to go through two sets of belongings. Alanna was grateful that she wasn’t one of the ones who had drawn that short straw, she honestly wasn’t sure she could have stomached doing it twice.

  When she got back from storage, she immediately noticed that someone had moved her stuff onto one of the vacated bunks. She opened her mouth to object, Dhoni saw her come in and gave a very slight shake of his head. Realising why it had been done she closed her mouth without speaking. It was a drawing together; easier for the survivors to ignore the empty bunks and what they represented when they were packed away into the bulkheads.

  ___________________________

  01.55 hours Fleet Time, Earth

  Message start. ++ Have made contact with enemy – estimate three of four enemy tankers destroyed – recommend home fleet attack – enemy position, ten point four minutes from hub, bearing zero, four, three dash zero, zero, three ++ Message End. Coding: G FIFTY-ONE, CORRECT Frequency: CORRECT Authorisation code: CORRECT. Conclusion: MESSAGE CONFIRMED AUTHENTIC.

  Lewis handed the paper slip back to Staff Captain Sheehan.

  "So, Vice Admiral Brian has managed to land a punch," Captain Holfe, the Warspites’ captain, said, "and survived long enough to tell us about it." There was a note of respect in the captain’s voice.

  Lewis grunted in reply. Indeed, Emily had managed to get a strike in. Now if she had any sense, she’d find a hole to hide in until the shooting stopped. Three tankers destroyed that could stop a fleet for days, but only assuming no replacements were close to hand. That was the gift and the curse of the FTL transmitters, they granted the ability to send simple messages winging between the stars but nothing more, he couldn’t be given the data Emily had based her conclusion on. Had she overstated the achievements of her beloved fighters? It all boiled down to trust. Did he trust her judgement?

  Yes he did.

  "Captain Sheehan, signal headquarters that we are leaving for Alpha Centauri as planned. Captain Holfe, signal the fleet to form up for jump out."

  Ten minutes later there was a flash as the Home Fleet left Earth astern.

  ___________________________

  Brian rubbed her eyes tiredly as she sat down on her bunk. Her knee was aching fiercely, but she’d lived with that for long enough to know how to ignore it. With the message now on its way to Earth, there hadn’t seemed much point in staying on the bridge. That wasn’t quite true, they had unquestionable alerted the Nameless to their presence in the system, but she needed to see her pilots with her own eyes; to judge whether they had anything left.

  It had been a mistake.

  The executors had finished packing away the gear of the fallen by the time she arrived. Squadron Commander Moscoe looked okay, Wing Commander Devane on the other hand was clearly shaken, and the rest of them were plainly shell-shocked. Oh they snapped to attention smart enough when she came in, but the glazed looks in their eyes told her everything she needed to know.

  Militaries had long known that few people had endless reserves of courage, for most courage was more like a bank account they could draw from for a while, then replenish during periods away from the fighting. But if there was a run on the bank that went on too long or was too severe, there were few people who wouldn’t crack. Rookie fighter pilots were, if anything, more vulnerable. Emily knew from experience, that in their case they had a sense of invulnerability that they were too good, too fast or even simply too lucky to die. Today had shattered that illusion for the survivors. They’d pitted youthful confidence against bloody reality, and in the process learned the harshest lesson of all: just how easily human beings broke. Given time people developed defence mechanisms, most of which revolved around not thinking about it. But the pil… no, trainees hadn’t had a chance to develop those.

  Unfortunately, the Dauntless was the worse possible place to come to that realisation. The small carrier had never been designed for long-term habitation, so had no recreation facilities. That left people with plenty of time to dwell on what had happened… and what it would be like the next time.

  Some people simply never recovered; Paul Lewis, an officer most people considered to have ice water for blood, had never been able to climb back into a cockpit after the First Battle of Earth. Neither had she of course, Brian reflected as she started to massage her knee, but her reasons were physical rather than psychological.

  The survivors of Dauntless’s squadron weren’t going to have that luxury, they were going to have to go in again. Emily glanced at the clock mounted on the bulkhe
ad. The Home Fleet would being receiving their message any minutes now, if they hadn’t already. That would put their arrival, if they had stuck to the plan, in roughly two hours and forty minutes. She’d have to send one of the couriers to shadow the Nameless and provide the Home Fleet with a homing beacon. As for them, as an operational unit, it was Dauntless’s duty to get into combat, but perhaps it would be enough for them to hover at the edge of the combat zone and use their fighters to pick off enemy lame ducks. Try to salvage something of the squadron.

  "Admiral Brian to the bridge! Admiral Brian to the bridge!" Screamed the PA system cutting savagely across her thoughts.

  Christ, they’ve found us!

  Brian leapt to her feet, and nearly fell as her weak leg buckled under her. Violently yanking her stick open she scrambled to the bridge. As she burst in her eyes immediately sought out the main display holo. Only five blips were visible, Dauntless, her destroyers and couriers.

  O’Malley was standing next to the communications console. The man was looking physically sick.

  "Captain what is it!" She asked urgently

  "Ma’am we’ve received a signal from the observation satellite Anton Eight. It’s on the far side of the system from us, so it’s already nearly thirty minutes old."

  "Norman what the hell is it!"

  O’Malley took a deep breath.

  "A second enemy force has just jumped into the system."

  "What? You mean a supporting elem-" she began.

  "Ma’am, it’s three times the size of the one we attacked! We’ve just aimed the Home Fleet at the wrong target!"

  Chapter Thirteen

  Blooding the guns

  Brian stood frozen, her mind unable to comprehend what she was hearing. She walked slowly over to the main holo, to see for herself the data.

  She activated the playback herself and the holo sprang to life. The second alien fleet had dropped back into realspace less than a light second away from one of their sensor satellites, they’d come out close enough for even the satellite’s optics to see them. There on the holo, were orderly ranks of starships, composed of the same types that Dauntless’s fighters had already attacked, but far more of them. After several seconds a missile detached from one of the alien ships and accelerated towards the satellite, a few seconds more and the image was replaced by ‘SIGNAL TERMINATED’.

  She leaned on the holo’s casing, her head lowered. How the hell could they have been so stupid? They’d assumed the enemy had only committed one fleet, they’d assumed that the methodical destruction of the sensor satellites from Baden to Alpha Centauri had been an instinctive reaction to deprive them of information. But now it was revealed that the Nameless had been playing a deeper, cleverer, game. The force they’d attacked hadn’t been the main force, it had been a sweeper force, there to distract and eliminate their reconnaissance, trip any defences. Leaving the main force to advance undetected.

  The second Nameless fleet was close enough to the first to offer support, but far enough away that it could choose not to engage. The Home Fleet would either find itself fighting a force four times bigger than the one it expected, or be bypassed completely.

  Emily slammed her fist down on the side of display causing the holo to flicker and buzz for a moment.

  "God damn it!"

  The bridge was deathly silent. Every man and woman present, was aware that they had a grandstand view of an impending catastrophe.

  "Suggestions?" Emily asked without raising her head or turning around.

  "Signal the Home Fleet when it makes realspace re-entry." Captain O’Malley said in a subdued voice. "It’s all we can do."

  "Not good enough captain. It will take the Home Fleet at least three hours, to purge their heat sinks sufficiently to allow transit back to Earth. Even then, I doubt more than half of them will be mechanically in any condition to do another high speed run. That means it will be at least twenty hours before they can return to Earth, which assumes they don’t make contact. If they do, it will be days before the Home Fleet, complete with damaged ships and depleted fuel and ammunition, returns to Earth. We have to hold that second fleet here."

  "Us! Ma’am we punched above our weight once! We’re not going to be able to do that again. I’m sorry Ma’am but we’ve blown it."

  ___________________________

  02.15 hours Fleet Time

  The page made absolutely no noise as it was turned. With Warspite’s flag bridge decompressed, there wasn’t any air to carry the sound. The book was a cheap novel Lewis had picked up the last time he was passing through Washington DC. It wasn’t very good, but Lewis stuck with it, it was all about keeping up appearances. As well as the usual command frequency, he had his intercom set to pick up everything being said on the bridge, he could hear orders given and reports made. Beneath his feet, he could feel the deck plating tremble slightly as the battleship rammed her way through jump space. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the occasional looks both the officers and rating were giving him. It was all an act of course; every man and woman on the bridge knew it. But equally, they all were prepared to pretend it wasn’t. Here they were, about to go into action, but things must be going to plan if the old man felt he could catch up on his reading.

  Lewis’s eyes flicked to the other side of the bridge, to the navigation repeater display. In the centre of the display, in big red numbers, was the countdown to their arrival in Alpha Centauri showing their ETA. The digits flicked to one hundred and eighteen minutes. A long time to wait, to find out if he’d made the right or wrong decision.

  ___________________________

  On the bridge of the Hood, Commander Willis resisted the urge to fidget in her command chair. Modern warships would decompress most of their fighting chambers ahead of action. It reduced the likelihood of secondary damage from fires and made life easier for the ship’s damage control teams. Hood however, like all ships of her generation, didn’t have that capacity, the lesson had only been learned during the Contact War, after her construction and it was starting to get on Willis’s nerves. Decompression would have meant that her survival suit would have expanded very slightly. But on Hood it hadn’t, and it was now rubbing in places it had never rubbed before. It wasn’t however the only thing irritating her.

  Heat, or to be more accurate, waste heat was the big limiting factor that decided how far a ship could travel in a single jump. The radiators which vented that excess heat in realspace, were much less efficient in jump space. So instead starship’s stored this heat in heat-sinks, to be radiated off once the ship made realspace re-entry. However heat-sinks were volume and mass intensive, and the size of the sink determined how much heat it could absorb. The fastest ships, couriers, were little more than a heat-sink with a ship wrapped round it, but most ships had to balance the volume given to the sinks against everything else. Hood had been designed to serve and fight inside Earth’s solar system; consequently, her heat sink was far too small to allow the little cruiser to make an interstellar passage. All of this meant that Hood, rather than being under her own power, was hanging as deadweight beneath a tug ship.

  It was like being on a leash. To all intents and purposes she was cargo. She could just as convincingly command her ship lying in her bunk! Her first jump-in command of her first ship, and she effectively wasn’t in control of the vessels movements.

  It was an irrational line of thinking she knew, but even so she’d feel better when they undocked from the tug for the final approach. Then, and only then, Faith Willis would find out whether she measured up as a captain.

  ___________________________

  02.35 hours Fleet Time

  It was a question of firepower, or a lack thereof. O’Malley was right, there was no doubt they had got lucky the first time. The tankers had been pretty much the only things they could hit that would reliably throw a spanner in the works. And as the captain said, a repeat performance was not on the cards. Over half Dauntless’s fighter group was gone, and Brian sincer
ely doubted she could count on the survivors to press home any second attack.

  Although that was a moot point anyway; much of her stand off launch capability was gone. The destruction of the sensor satellites, had forced her to dispatch one of the couriers to shadow the second Nameless fleet and report its movements. Its first report had been that the Nameless had learned, the escort around the six tankers present, was far stronger and tighter. The other courier had been despatched to the first alien fleet, to both shadow it and alert the Home Fleet to their findings as soon as it arrived. It was a lot to ask of unarmed eggshells, and both couriers were already reporting that the Nameless were taking pot-shots at them; she couldn’t send a message back to them, to acknowledge their efforts, to do so would risk compromising Dauntless’s position. They could still use the two destroyers to get the fighters close enough, they could even join the attack themselves, but against such a force, that would definitely count as pissing into the wind.

  Brian rubbed her eyes tiredly and took a sip of stone cold coffee; the conference room was utterly silent. Each of the officers present avoided the eyes of their neighbours, as if they were trying to distance themselves from the approaching disaster. The minutes were trickling away and nobody had any ideas.

  No sane ones anyway.

  There was one option: a zero range combat drop. Like the first, the second Nameless fleet was not inside any mass shadow. That meant Dauntless, plus escort, could make a jump straight into the middle of their fleet, dropping her fighters directly into the fray. As with the first time, the warships were fuelling from the tankers, which would suggest they needed that fuel.

  Having the human ships appear in their lap, would cause absolute havoc… for a few minutes. Then Dauntless would either have to jump out, or more likely be destroyed. It was a risk only worth running, if there was at least half a chance that they could inflict some serious damage. But with only five fighters and two destroyers, there was a pretty limited amount of hurt they could dish out, in the short window of opportunity they would have. And by a roundabout route that brought them back to the original problem: firepower.