“Do you think we’ll be able to get leave, sir?” Hockley continued.
“Maybe for some of the younger crew and officers but I wouldn’t count on any general leave. I got the impression that we’re coming home for a definite purpose,” Crowe replied before pointing into the main holo. “There are a lot of ships here. There’s the Fifth Cruiser Squadron and the Fortitude. They were both at Hydra station the last I heard.”
“A lot of transports as well.” Hockley was looking again at the holo. “I wonder if we’re here for the legendary big push.”
The mail from Earth that had reached them at Junction over the past few months had been full of speculation about a supposed great offensive that was to win the war. No one on the Junction Line gave it much credence.
“I’d say the big something anyway,” Crowe said thoughtfully, before something caught his eye. It was a transponder code he’d know until his dying days - that of the Mississippi, still where they had parked her after that first clash with the Nameless, when the fleet decided she was beyond economic repair.
“Mississippi eh?” Hockley remarked looking at the holo. “I guess there hasn’t been a dockyard free yet to start pulling her apart.”
“No. I guess not,” Crowe replied after moment. “I’m sure they will eventually, or cannibalise her for parts.” Until then Mississippi would wait, like a corpse left unburied.
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5th July 2067, Main Fleet Headquarters, Dublin, Earth
The main meeting chamber was awash with uniforms, mostly Battle Fleet as might have been expected but also a respectable number of personnel from the various national space forces and commercial shipping lines. There was a certain amount of mingling going on but people were mainly sticking to their own cliques. The briefing was supposed to have started ten minutes earlier but staff officers were still circulating, handing out the notes on storage cards.
“Clearly not trusting any wireless network for this,” Crowe remarked as he plugged the card into his pad. The word ‘LOCKED’ appeared on his screen.
“And we’re only going to look at this when they’re good and ready.”
Crowe turned and found he was talking to no one. Lieutenant Shermer was speaking to someone on her intercom. As a Commodore he wasn’t entitled to a full time staff officer but he could bring one of his own officers as a temporary one. He’d decided to bring Shermer so she could take the chance to visit home. Even after all these months on Deimos she hadn’t thawed and privately, Crowe remained certain that anyone who seemed that much in control must be close to cracking. Finally she broke the connection and turned back to him.
“I’m sorry sir,” she said, “a call from Deimos. Our new pilot has turned up.”
“Anyone you know?”
Alanna shook her head. “No sir. Commander Hockley said he’s straight out of training, so a couple of years behind me.”
“Green as grass?”
“Yes sir,” Alanna shrugged, “to be expected. Experienced pilots are in short supply.”
“Yes,” Crowe replied. A week before Deimos headed for Earth they’d lost Pilot Officer Sinochem. A fragment of God knows what had smashed through his fighter’s cockpit and taken his left arm off just above the elbow. His survival suit saved his life and his weapons controller managed to limp the fighter back to Deimos. When he came round the normally depressive Sinochem had been delighted he’d beaten the odds. In a war where fighter pilots had one of the highest mortality rates of any Battle Fleet personnel, he had a wound that would take him back to Earth and all it had cost him was an arm. As a Commodore, it wasn’t an attitude that Crowe could exactly condone, but as he looked round the room, he could understand it. Here and there, there were officers wearing shiny new captain’s stripes he’d last seen as commanders and lieutenant commanders.
“Well when you get back up there, Lieutenant, make sure to put him through his paces.”
“Yes sir,” Alanna replied. She looked like she was about to say something more but then stiffened to attention. Turning Crowe found himself looking up at the dour face of Admiral Lewis.
“Commodore Crowe,” Lewis said, “before we start I would like to have a word with you.” His cold eyes flicked to Alanna.
“Lieutenant, if we could have a moment’s privacy.”
The two of them walked slowly to the back of the room in silence. The Admiral was notorious within the fleet for his lack of interest in small talk or in playing political games. Certainly he made the fleet’s political leaders nervous. After the Mississippi Incident he’d backed Crowe to the hilt, which was probably, the only reason Crowe had retained command of a ship. But equally Crowe had no doubt the Admiral would send him into the machineguns without hesitation if he judged it necessary. So it wasn’t just the politicians he made nervous.
“I assume your ship is ready for the operation?” Lewis asked as they reached the back wall.
“Yes sir,” Crowe replied. “The Lieutenant was just informing me that our new pilot has arrived. Once we know what the operation is, we’ll be able to make final preparations.”
“How is your ship holding up?”
Crowe was about to say something blandly positive but stopped himself. This wasn’t a man who wanted bland anything.
“So far the machinery continues to perform but my engineering department is working very hard. Deimos doesn’t berth as many engineers as a Myth Class and there isn’t space or life support capacity for any more. The turret rings of the flak turrets are starting to show signs of wear. At current levels of activity she’s going to need a full refit in twelve to eighteen months.”
That was something civilians failed to understand - just because a ship didn’t have holes blasted in it didn’t mean it was fine. Peacetime restrictions on acceleration and manoeuvring, designed to limit the wear and tear on a ship’s structure and systems, were one of the first things to go out the airlock in wartime. Add hits and even near misses and the result was ships that got tired fast, particularly Deimos. She had never been designed for battle line work. She’d been intended to escort fighter carriers and similarly sluggish ships, so she hadn’t been as sturdily built as a heavy cruiser. No micro fractures had been detected yet but that was only a matter of time.
“That’s acceptable as long as we get that time Commodore,” Lewis replied. “What do you know about the coming operation?”
“Only what the grapevine is saying.”
“Which is?”
“An offensive to push forward the Junction Line and envelop the current the Nameless gate network.”
Lewis smiled humourlessly. “It would appear for once we’ve managed to wrong foot the rumour mill. It wouldn’t be a bad plan if we had the warships and the support vessels to make it work.”
“Why the misdirection sir?”
“The press and the rest of the entertainment industry don’t have the sense or discipline to keep their collective mouths shut. The Nameless send their scouts over the Junction Line and I would be surprised if they don’t have ships hanging at the edge of this system listening to our radio transmissions. So misdirection is needed.”
“So what are we doing?”
“You’ll find out in a few minutes Commodore, but Deimos will be heavily involved. Which means there is a point I would like to impress upon you and the rest of the senior officers. While this operation is important it is not so important that we can afford to lose many ships doing it, particularly ships like Deimos.” Lewis looked directly at Crowe. “Whatever else happens Commodore, bring your ship back.” He glanced towards the front. “It would appear things are starting,” he said before walking away.
“What was that about sir?” Alanna asked in a rare display of curiosity as Crowe took his seat.
“The Admiral just wanted a word,” Crowe replied, “to make a few points.”
Alanna waited to see if Crowe would add anything further but he remained silent. Then Admiral Wingate strode onto the main stage and
came to a halt in the centre, his hands folded behind his back.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, your attention please,” he announced. “Your pads are now unlocked, so please turn to page one. Before we get down to details we will start with a brief overview.” The Admiral started to walk back and forth across the stage. “This combined operation will represent our first major sortie beyond the Junction Line since it was established. It will also see an unprecedented degree of co-operation between Battle Fleet units and those of the national militaries. This operation will have two distinct aspects. The first and most important is codenamed Operation Kite String. This will be a convoy of thirty-two transport ships, which will be forced through to Landfall.” A murmur of surprise ran around the room, “The second part, operating in support of Kite String, is to be called Operation Vindictive. This will see elements of the First and Second Fleets strike at a series of critical gates in the network that faces the Junction Line. These attacks will serve a twin purpose: pulling away units that might intercept Kite String short of Landfall and disrupting the Nameless supply lines. They may perhaps also open further opportunities in the future. Commodore Tsukioka will now take us through both operations in more detail…”
___________________
“…the convoy escort will be organised into two distinct elements - Heavy Cover and Light Cover. Heavy Cover will be under Admiral Hyland and will consist of the battleship Fortitude, six cruisers and nine destroyers. They will be tasked with escorting us from the Red line to the Blue Line. Light Cover, of which we are going to be a part, will be under the command of Admiral Kennedy on board the heavy cruiser Horus. As well as Horus and us, there will be two more regular cruisers, a pair of auxiliary cruisers and six destroyers. This is the route we will be following to Landfall.” Crowe tapped the control and the wardroom holo activated showing a simplified star chart. Collectively the officers of Deimos leaned forward to study it. The convoy would be taking a distinctly sub-optimal route, zigzagging twice across the commercial track but mostly staying well clear of it.
“Transit time is going to be in the region of four and a half weeks. The systems where we are going to drop back into real space for cool downs have been chosen because they are particularly isolated. Recon units haven’t sighted any Nameless units in these systems and Headquarters believes that with the exception of the last system we will transit through, these systems are out of the jump range of the Nameless. That last system is borderline. Intelligence believes the Nameless will have to run risks to get there. So we may or may not see them.”
“Can we not skip that last system?” asked the gunner.
“No,” Crowe replied. “We aren’t going to jump to the edge of the Landfall system before jumping to Landfall itself. We are going for a thread the needle jump, straight for Landfall, so we need our navigators to get a clear positional fix.”
“That will require some mighty long jumps,” Hockley said. “Can we make jumps that long without melting the heat sink?”
“The book says we can,” replied the navigator. “Hardware is the real issue.”
All heads turned towards the engineer.
“We can do it,” he said in a vaguely belligerent tone. “It’s the transports I want to know about.”
“Well, the need to make long jumps has put a real limit on the selection of ships for this op,” Crowe replied glancing at his notes, “At the top end we have the American drop carrier the USS Liberty, which can certainly match and exceed any jump we can manage. At the other end of the scale we have SS Solar Queen, which is nearly a quarter century old and basically first generation.” A few people winced. “But basically we’ll leave behind any ship that suffers an engineering fault and can’t make the jumps. If it happens before we cross the Junction Line they return to Earth. After the Line, they’ll be left at one of the isolated systems to await our return.”
“Ouch,” someone muttered.
“One final point. We’ll be carrying our fighters to Landfall, but once we’re in, unless we take the Nameless completely by surprise, we’ll be in action and the fighters won’t be able to land. Instead they’ll be landing and resupplying from the auxiliary cruiser Buffalo, which will be positioned within the escort perimeter. Any questions?”
At the back of the wardroom, where she had been standing with her arms crossed, Alanna raised her hand.
“Sir, what is object IA0147?” she asked pointing at the relevant contact, marked as being in the Lagrange Point between Landfall and the planet’s moon.
“It’s listed as being an asteroid - high metal content, local designation Breaker’s Rock. It was being moved towards Landfall’s Moon for the orbital industries when the war started. It got parked there before the planet was besieged,” Crowe replied after checking his notes. It’s not important in itself but the local space gate the Nameless use to supply their forces on the planet is close by, so we’ll be dog legging in slightly to destroy it as we go past. Any other questions?”
Heads were shaken and there were murmurs of ‘no’.
“Alright, we leave in six days. I want this ship as ready as it possibly can be,” Crowe said. “If we’re lucky we’ll be in and out of Landfall before the Nameless even know we’re there, but we aren’t counting on luck.”
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19th July 2067
Grand send-offs weren’t really a feature of space travel, at least not beyond historical firsts. Even by these standards the start of Operation Kite String was restrained, starting with more of a whisper than a bang.
Warships and transports gathered in the shadow of Earth’s moon. Each new arrival was slotted into a prearranged place inside the formation. With the last arrivals there were a few days of formation flying, just enough to confirm they’d be doing a lot of on the job training. Finally the convoy made a moderately smooth turn before accelerating out of the lunar mass shadow and jumping out of Earth’s solar system.
___________________
26th July 2067
“Jump in complete sir,” reported the Navigator as Deimos jolted back into real space. The system they were now entering had never been important enough to warrant a name. In all probability Kite String had brought more ships than the system had ever seen in its entire existence.
“Radar, full sweep,” Crowe ordered. “Fighters?”
“D for Dubious and C for Curious are moving onto stati…”
A bridge alarm sounded sharply.
“Collision alert!” called out the helmsman. “We’re on convergent course with the transport Van Ellen! Separation, eighty K, collision in one hundred and ten seconds.”
“Hold course Helm,” Crowe ordered. “Tactical, is she going to stay inside the perimeter?”
“She’s gone full burn sir,” came the prompt reply across the intercom. “Negative on remaining within the convoy perimeter. She’s going to breach the perimeter by at least thirty K.”
“Not again,” Crowe muttered. “Understood Tactical. Helm, two degrees to port, bows up three degrees. Tactical, order Dubious and Curious to plug the gaps.”
The last bit of his order was probably unnecessary. Dubious had already read the situation and was moving out, with Curious staying on her wing.
Around him his bridge swung into action. It was now a pretty well rehearsed sequence they went through each time the convoy dropped back into real space. It was getting better, but that wasn’t the same as good or even good enough. It was just as well they hadn’t yet crossed the Junction Line.
“Looks like the Bengal lost position as well sir,” Lieutenant Colwell reported wearily. “Damn near went into Wildebeest.”
“At least Marchers Wake seems to have got its act together,” Crowe replied. He didn’t take his eyes off the main bridge holo, watching as the convoy settled itself and the ships started to deploy their radiator panels to emit their waste heat. “I know that Admiral Hyland isn’t going to authorise any ship to drop out until after we cross the Junction Line. Not unles
s something falls off.”
The formation of the convoy wasn’t a matter of shoving ships in any old how. The transports needed to be in as tight a sphere formation as they could manage without ships taking damage from each other’s engine plumes. The tighter the formation, the smaller the sphere and the smaller the area the escorts would have to fill with counter fire when the time came. Plus the most valuable transports, the drop carriers that carried thousands of hibernating soldiers, needed to be kept in the middle of the formation, where they would be safest - at the expense of less valuable ships.
The problem was the civvies weren’t used to this kind of formation flying. The vessels of the national militaries had been a bit rough at first but quickly became just as smooth as the Battle Fleet ships. The commercial transports though, used to flying with at least a thousand kilometres separation, were flying within a hundred kilometres of other ships and their collision alarms sounding continuously. But every time one of them moved out of formation, they made the job of the escorts harder.
Out of the corner of his eye Crowe saw the duty communications officer wince and raised a questioning eyebrow.
“There’s a transmission in the clear coming from Fortitude to the Van Ellen, sir. Someone is getting a flea in his ear from the Admiral,” he explained then paused. “He’s telling them if they screw up the next jump in, he’ll leave them on the other side of the Junction Line and let them find their own way back.”
Crowe smiled and shook his head.
“I doubt it, but no one will risk it now.” Next stop would be enemy territory.
___________________
16th August 2067
Three weeks passed quietly and pleasantly boringly, as Kite String zigzagged from one remote star system to the next. Each time the convoy dropped back into real space, transports had to be chased back into formation, while fighters deployed to form the outer screen. There they would hold for a few hours as ships cooled their heat sinks, then the fighters would fall back on their base ships and Kite String would jump away. There was no sign of the Nameless.
The Landfall Campaign (The Nameless War) Page 35