The Landfall Campaign (The Nameless War)

by Edmond Barrett

“So, you’re trying to sneak into Hawkings base without announcing yourself! Was that for official reasons or seeing if we’d gone to seed out here?”

  “Oh, a little from column A and a little from column B.” Reaching into his pocket Vince pulled out a data stick, “I need to brief Admiral Shibanova about my ship and my mission here.”

  The Admiral didn’t rise when Vincent entered but did regard him with curiosity.

  “Commander Espey reporting, sir.”

  “Commander,” Shibanova said eventually, “you appear to be out of uniform.”

  “Yes sir,” Espey replied. “I was authorised to keep my ship’s arrival discrete. I am here to supplement your command, sir.” He offered a computer data stick. “These are instructions from Earth and details about my command.”

  The Admiral took it but set it down. “Your ship appears to be just a standard transport ship. Could you please explain the need for discretion?”

  “I’m glad to hear that you think my ship is just a transport sir. Her official name is Deceiver. She’s a Q-Ship, that’s to say, a ship that appears unarmed but is carrying hidden weaponry…”

  “I know what a Q-Ship is,” Shibanova snapped at him, before pausing to rub his eyes. “Please continue Commander.”

  “She’s a standard Olympus class transport that has been modified to assist with your raider problem.”

  “A Q-Ship,” Shibanova said heavily. “I ask for reinforcements and they send me a Q-Ship.” He looked like he was about to say something more biting but instead sighed. “How is your ship armed?”

  “Our offensive armament is four twenty-centimetre rail guns, two to a broadside in limited traverse mounts.”

  Willis whistled appreciatively and added, “you’d core a battleship with those if you get in close enough.”

  “If the target gets in close enough,” Shibanova added, but with much less enthusiasm. “What defences do you have?”

  “A limited point defence grid, ECM package, decoys, chaff dispensers and gaseous shielding.”

  “Pardon me, gaseous what, Commander?” Shibanova looked puzzled, as did Willis.

  “A bright idea by someone in Headquarters,” Vincent explained. “We have pipes rigged up from our helium tanks. It will allow us to stream the gas from our bows over the hull. It will give us some protection against lasers for as long as the gas lasts.”

  “That would be?” Willis asked.

  “Seven minutes with full tanks,” Vincent shrugged. “As a civilian ship she already had the tanks for waste helium that comes from the reactors, which they normally store for resale. They take up too much space to be worth it on a normal warship, but we have a lot of internal volume on Deceiver. Someone decided to try something.”

  Shibanova sighed again. “This sounds like somebody getting carried away with a pet project,” he said heavily. “Well, we will attempt to use your ship as intended, but time for such measures has likely passed. Commander Willis, can I leave you to integrate Deceiver into our new measures.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “So Faithie, how have you been?” Espey asked when they were both seated back in her cabin.

  “Considering this is supposed to be a dead-end assignment, busy,” Willis replied as she sat back and looked at her old friend. The last time she’d seen him he’d just had a ship shot out from under him. He’d looked terrible then, now he seemed to be back to being the way she remembered him.

  “More importantly what are you doing here?”

  “I was serving as first officer on Cerberus. I heard about them sending a ship out here, so I expressed an interest.” Vincent took a sip from his drink.

  “You volunteered?” Willis said and shook her head mockingly. “Oh Vincent.”

  “Didn’t think it was a Q-Ship though. Thought it was going to be an auxiliary cruiser.” He gave a slight shrug. “Someone decided to go down a different route.”

  “We… well the Admiral, was expecting a more conventional ship. He was… disappointed.”

  “Yeah, the welcome did lack warmth,” Vincent replied dryly. “Thing is Headquarters is alarmed by these attempts to seize ships. If the Rizr get hold of a working version of our jump drives, even a commercial one, that would give them a dangerous improvement to their mobility. Headquarters thought an auxiliary cruiser would be too slow, too weak and just present them with another target. We’ve been training on Deceiver for two months Faithie. I think a Q-Ship can work out here.”

  “I’m glad to see you Vincent,” Willis paused. “Deceiver though,” she shook her head. “We have two couriers that we’ve been using for recce missions. They aren’t configured properly for reconnaissance work, so they’re limited to flyby missions on the main Rizr bases at Sickles One and Two. There is a definite build-up of forces of warships, support ships and troop transports at both locations. The Admiral thinks they’ve also managed to establish a fuelling depot somewhere between Sickle Two and here, which would allow them to move a major force here, but that’s speculation. We don’t have the recce capability to search the systems that a depot could be set up in. Basically he thinks the Rizr are going to try a major move to take Dryad, and I agree with him. Deceiver was probably a good idea when they came up with it. It might have scared them off a few months ago, but now that’s unlikely.”

  “You really think they’re going to attack?” Vincent replied.

  “We do, as does Admiral Melchiori of the Frontier Squadron.”

  “Is that why the Antarctica is here?”

  “Yes,” Willis nodded. “Each time his squadron heads out to the Aèllr frontier two or three days later one of his cruisers comes back for ‘repairs’.” Willis gave Vincent a wry smile. “Sometimes he has to look pretty hard to find a problem worth sending a ship back for. It means we have at least one semi-modern ship around most of the time without breaking the Council’s instructions too flagrantly.”

  Vincent nodded and set down his cup.

  “I suppose we’d better get on with some real work.”

  Willis reached to turn on her computer terminal and hesitated.

  “Vince, what happens if they recognise your ship before they get inside your effective range?” she could hear the concern in her voice but with him, she didn’t try to conceal it.

  “Well Faithie,” he replied slowly, “that’ll be an interesting day. I’ll try to hang in there long enough for you to ride to the rescue.”

  “Well Vince, let hope that doesn’t happen. In the meantime, welcome to the wrong end of the priority list.”

  ___________________

  19th April 2067

  The battle was already a lost cause. A number of bad moves in the opening stages had resulted in heavy casualties early on. After that he’d raised his game but the damage had already been done and the reality was that all he could do was delay the inevitable. As Vincent looked down the only options he could see were a last stand or surrender.

  “Concede,” Vincent said as he reached over and knocked the king onto its side, before adding: “y’know lieutenant, when I was your rank it was thought polite to let your C.O. win occasionally.”

  Lieutenant Denvers smiled politely as he started putting the chess pieces away.

  “I wouldn’t want to be accused of giving anything less than one hundred percent sir.”

  “Good reply.”

  Vincent stood up and made his way over to one of the wardroom’s armchairs. One of the few things he missed was being able to spend time in the wardroom. As a ship’s captain he could now only enter on the sufferance of his officers. Lieutenant Denvers only managed to get half the chess pieces put away before another pair of off-duty officers took them from him. Deceiver wasn’t by any means a hotbed of chess enthusiasts but it killed time, and on board Deceiver time was one thing they had more than enough of.

  The ship was accelerating slowly away from Dryad Three. With one engine shut down completely and radar reflectors deployed, Deceiver had the profile of a small jump-capable
in-system transport, exactly the type that had so far proved the most attractive to Rizr raiders. For nearly a month Deceiver had trudged from planet to planet within the system. Twice they’d left the system and come back in, to simulate an interstellar transport arriving. Each time they reached a destination, they would pause just long enough to change the ship’s radar profile and take up a new identity. Yet for all their efforts, there had been no encounters with the enemy. Not that the Rizr weren’t still active. Since Deceiver’s arrival another slow boat had been destroyed. However a separate Rizr protected cruiser narrowly avoided destruction at the hands of Hood and Onslaught when it jumped in on a transport that they were escorting. The range had been just long enough for it to escape before the two Earth ships were able to cripple it. By contrast, boredom remained the biggest enemy on board Deceiver.

  As Espey sat down, the ship’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Commander Mamista, came in and looked around for a moment before spotting his commander. Vincent was happy enough with his first officer but Mamista was definitely the poster child of the wartime fleet. In terms of rank he was more than five years ahead of where Vincent had been at the same age. He was also an example of the strange logic of bureaucracy. He’d been a member of the crew of the Mississippi when that ship made the first violent contact with the Nameless, but now he was at Dryad, on the far side of human space.

  “Sir, may I join you?” he asked. Vincent nodded toward the chair opposite.

  “What is it?”

  “We’ve just received a warning that the Dryad detection grid has picked up another Rizr protected cruiser arriving at the edge of the system.”

  “What’s the lag?”

  “It’s closer in than usual, sir. It’s three and a half light hours from us,” Mamista replied. “Hawkings Base won’t receive the transmission for another two hours.”

  “If we’re seeing its arrival then if it’s planning on coming in-system, it’s probably made its move.”

  “Yes sir,” Mamista agreed.

  “And if it hasn’t dropped in on us then it’s gone someone else. Damn it!”

  “Yes sir. There’s something else that might be more serious. Communications overheard a conversation between two tug pilots at Dryad Five. One of them clearly mentioned a decoy warship. ‘Decoy warship’ were his exact words.”

  “Please tell me there was at least commercial encoding.”

  Mamista shook his head, “Someone in orbital control heard them as well and told them to shut up.”

  “When was this?”

  “We got the transmission about forty minutes ago sir.”

  “Hell’s teeth. Did that Rizr cruiser hear it?”

  “If it’s jumped then it likely missed the transmission. If it hung on though, then it could have heard and even if they missed the original conversation, then the shout from orbital control will definitely have raised a flag. Sir, I think you’ll have to speak to the Admiral. If the Rizr find out that a Q-Ship is in the system they could just stay at stand-off range and shoot transports rather than try to take them.”

  “And if that happens we’ll have succeeded in our mission to stop them from taking a human jump drive, but for us personally it’s a problem,” Vincent said half to himself. “Because Deceiver only works as a concept if the Rizr keep attempting to take ships intact.”

  “Of course sir, ‘decoy warship’ can be taken two ways. A ship that is armed but doesn’t look like it is…”

  “Or an unarmed ship that looks like a warship,” Vincent finished for him.

  “That is the more appropriate interpretation,” Mamista replied.

  “In English yes, but once it’s translated, that distinction might not be so clear.”

  The main alarm gave a sudden whoop.

  “Battle stations! Battle stations! All hands to battle station!” the intercom barked. There was a crush of bodies as everyone in the wardroom dived for the hatch.

  “Report!” Vincent shouted as he entered Deceiver’s bridge.

  “Rizr protected cruiser has just jumped in, approximately thirty thousand kilometres beyond the red line,” shouted back the duty officer. “We are currently twenty thousand kilometres inside the mass shadow.”

  Vincent started pull on his survival suit. Around him the rest of his crew were doing likewise.

  “Tactical?”

  “It’s a Rizr C Class protected cruiser, it is adjusting heading… it’s now on an intercept course. They’ve just established weapons lock on us.”

  “Fire control?”

  “We’re charging the railgun capacitors, fifteen seconds to firing capability. Point defence is now on standby.”

  Vincent clipped his helmet into place.

  “Panic party?” he asked across the intercom.

  “Panic party mustering now, sir,” Mamista replied. “Closed up and ready.”

  “Thank you Lieutenant. Coms, I think that’s long enough. Send our distress signal.”

  “Understood sir, transmitting now Skipper,” replied the communications officer before turning back to his console. “Hawkings Base, this is the Luttrell Express, Raider, Raider, Raider…”

  “Tactical, your recommendation?”

  “He’s in too close for us to plausibly run for the red line. Recommend we reverse course and head for the planet.”

  “Okay. Navigator, give helm the least time course back to the planet. Helmsman, make the turn and make it look sloppy.”

  Deceiver started to slowly turn. As the bows came around the engines went to full power, or at least what would be full power for a standard in-system ship.

  “Skipper,” called out the communications officer, “we’re receiving an audio transmission from the Raider.”

  “Let me hear it.”

  “Ship of the Earth,” came the flat mechanical voice of a translation matrix, “deactivate… your engines, we are seizing… your vessel. Inflict damage on… your vessel, we will destroy… you. Leave your vessel undamaged… you will be unharmed.”

  They want the ship, Vincent thought to himself, thank God for that.

  “Bridge to Lieutenant Mamista, prepare the panic party.”

  “Standing by sir. Are they going for it?”

  “Looks like it. Stand by. Bridge to Engineering, I want a staggered shutdown of the engines to put us into a slow tumble. Helm don’t, repeat don’t, compensate. Starting now.”

  “Understood sir,” replied the engineer across the intercom link. The vibrations from astern faded and instead of the steady pressure of acceleration pushing him into his seat, Vincent felt the ship settle into a tumble.

  “Bridge to Lieutenant Mamista, dispatch the panic party.”

  “Roger.”

  The hatches for the two shuttle bays popped open, each releasing a burst of atmosphere. One shuttle launched, its main engines firing dangerously close to the ship’s hull as it accelerated away. The second rolled out at a safer rate but also started to move away from Deceiver, but then hesitated.

  “Infrared spike!” shouted Tactical, “they’re firing. Shuttle two has been hit!”

  Vincent gritted his teeth. He’d never liked the idea of the panic party, but they needed to give the impression that the ship had not only been abandoned, but abandoned so quickly that the key systems hadn’t been sabotaged. Shuttle Two had been designated as the one that would look as if the crew were thinking about going back, to do what they should have done before leaving.

  “They’ve lost a wingtip, hull integrity looks okay.”

  On the display he saw the shuttle take the hit, roll and accelerate away from Deceiver on full burn, keeping the Q-Ship between them and the raider. Vincent’s attention shifted to the blip representing the Rizr ship, trying to judge whether it’s captain was convinced by their performance.

  “Skipper,” said the tactical officer, “the raider is continuing to close. I think he’s going for a least time approach.”

  Of course least time still meant in the region of sevent
y minutes, waiting for the Rizr ship to enter the effective range of their railguns, during which the alien could fire at any time. If the alien sent their own shuttle, with a prize crew, they could keep the range dangerously long. But that didn’t happen. The protected cruiser continued to accelerate in, eager to claim its reward before Faithie and her squadron could receive his transmission.

  “Target has crossed though the ten K mark,” Tactical reported about fifty minutes after the panic party left. “If he stays at the current deceleration rate, he’s going to come to rest relative to us at a range of fifteen hundred kilometres. That’s fifteen minutes from now.”

  “Understood Tactical,” Vincent replied. There was a slight croak in his voice after sitting motionless and silent for nearly an hour. “Helm, fire control, I intend to engage at three thousand kilometres. When I give the word, be ready to present broadside and fire.” Concentrating so intently on the holo display he scarcely heard the affirmative replies. Three thousand kilometres would be well within the range at which they could reasonably expect to hit a target with railguns, but if there was one thing all his training had taught him, it was that Deceiver needed to win in one broadside. Anything resembling a fair fight wasn’t likely to end well for them.

  Another ten minutes inched past as the raider kept closing and Deceiver continued to tumble. Finally Vincent heard the blip in his earpiece to indicate the raider was now three thousand kilometres from them.

  “Helm, present port broadside! Fire Control, fire at will!”

  Deceiver’s engines erupted jolting the ship out of its tumble, and swinging it round, bringing to bear her two portside guns. Working from passive sensors fire control had been given all the time they needed to develop a firing solution. The two big railguns were still hidden behind gun ports that were little more than foil, just enough to fool any radar or visual inspection of the hull but not enough to in anyway impede the salvo of three rounds each of them now fired through the ports.

  The Rizr ship got a little under seven seconds of warning. They reacted with commendable speed, switching their engines from all-back to all-ahead as the ship started to try to dive under the salvoes’ projected course. But it took time to overcome the ship’s inertia and the six rounds weren’t aimed at a single point. Instead they were spread out to cover all of the points Deceiver’s computer had calculated the Rizr ship could reach in the allowed time.