As she closed through the one hundred and fifty thousand kilometre mark, Alanna watched with a certain amount of grim humour as the Nameless redeployed into a tight defensive formation that put the transports right at the heart.
“Easy fellas. I think you can take me,” she murmured as she gently turned Dubious to take up a position running parallel to the aliens. Even if she was carrying ship-killing ordnance there was no way she was going to try to plunge in all on her own. Once in position she cut power to the engines and allowed Dubious to coast.
“Y’know Skipper,” Schurenhofer said after while, “I swear to God that these guys are trying to break line of sight to the new transports.”
“That’s what defensive formations are for.”
“Yeah, which might be reasonable if we were wandering around with a plasma cannon. But these guys seem to be trying to get physically between us and the transports Envoy was looking at.”
“Have we managed to get any kind of a look at them,” Alanna asked.
“Visuals have got a couple of decent shots.”
“Let me see.” The angle was a bit awkward but certainly there was nothing particularly unusual about them. “There must be something special here.”
“Skipper?”
“Well, the way things are going they’ve either got something new, or they’re going to do something stupid,” Alanna said. “They’re getting in close but if our ships make a run at them they aren’t going to be able to keep the range open.”
“If there’s something there, I for one am not seeing it,” Schurenhofer replied grumpily.
“Well maybe Deimos or Envoy will spot something. Are you forwarding our reading on to them?”
“Of course Skipper,” Schurenhofer replied indignantly.
“D for Dubious,” the radio suddenly crackled. “This is Deimos. Return to ship. Repeat, return to ship. Acknowledge.”
“Understood, Deimos. On our way.”
On full burn it took Dubious over ninety minutes to catch up with the now retreating Deimos and by the time the fighter was drawn into her hangar, Alanna had been in the cockpit for almost five hours.
“Order from the bridge, ma’am. You’re to stand by your plane,” the deck chief said as she stuck her head out the access hatch. The deck crew was already working on Dubious, removing unused light missiles. He handed her a ship’s intercom earpiece, “The Skipper wants to speak to you.”
“Thanks. Bridge, this is Lieutenant Shermer.”
“Shermer, are you able for another sortie,” Crowe asked.
“Of course sir,” she replied while thinking, I could hardly say no.
“The Admiral has decided to put in a fighter strike with all available fighters. Wing Commander Carano will be senior officer. You’ll be section leader for Deimos and Envoy’s fighters.”
“When sir?”
“The fighters from Junction and the ships still there launched about half an hour ago. We’ve got about an hour twenty before they reach us and you launch. You’ve got twenty minutes to freshen up and grab a bite to eat. We’ve received a briefing upload from Junction.”
“Understood sir. We’ll be ready. How many fighters?”
“Twenty-six in total.”
“Very good sir.”
“Just the twenty-six of us?” Schurenhofer looked unimpressed when Alanna gave her the details.
“Don’t moan. At Alpha Centauri it was twelve of us against over a hundred of them.”
“Yeah and I remember how that ended,” she muttered before Alanna shot her an irritated look.
As the fighters from Junction reached Deimos, Dubious shot off the launch rail. C for Curious and the two fighters from Envoy swung in behind. The transit time was eighty minutes and halfway there the Nameless began to react. Their fleet made a slow turn through ninety degrees. That would delay making contact but not avoid it. In fact at this range there was no course of action that would avoid it now. Far astern of Dubious, the ships of Junction were rising away from the ring and putting themselves onto an intercept course. The fighter’s role would be to strike and hamstring as many Nameless ships as possible. Once a number of their ships were slowed by damage, the Nameless would either have to write off any ship that couldn’t run or allow the Battle Fleet ships to get into plasma cannon range. Neither would end well for them.
“New contacts,” Schurenhofer said as she leaned over her display, “they’re firing.”
“What!” Alanna exclaimed. The range was still showing as nearly a light second. The missiles could certainly cross that but the chance of hitting anything would be around nil.
“Confirmed, we have contacts launching for… launching… that can’t be right!”
“What?” Alanna snapped as she flicked Dubious off autopilot.
“Erm… they’re coming out of the new support ships. Erm… I don’t think they’re missiles.”
_____________________
Crowe’s frown deepened as he stared at the new contacts on the main holo. They weren’t moving directly towards the fighters or even Deimos and Envoy. They were settling onto a track that would take them towards the planet’s rings, but not particularly close to Junction Station. That eliminated missiles as a likely option.
“Sensors, Bridge. Can you get a close look at one of the new contacts?” he asked.
“The size and range is making it difficult to focus sir.”
“Helm. Cut power to the engines. Sensors, give me a visual. Put it up on the main holo.”
The image that came up was little more than a dot, on which the camera zoomed in and focused before the computer enhanced. It was an elongated egg shape with a drive at the rear and four short stubby wings mounted in an X formation roughly halfway along. There was a structure right at the front that Crowe couldn’t make out. Then the object performed a half roll. There were two more short winglets on either side of the nose like a hammerhead. Mounted on the end of each was one of the small dual-purpose missiles the Nameless had been using since the start of the war.
“They’re fighters! The bastards have fighters now!” Crowe said before snapping, “Give me the tactical display. How many of those new contacts?”
“Three of the new transports launched sixty each. The fourth does not appear to have launched, sir.”
“Can our fighters intercept?”
There was a long pause.
“Damn it! Sensors, can they intercept!” Crowe shouted.
“Working it out now, sir,” came the harassed reply.
As Crowe watched the holo he started to suspect the answer. The human Raven fighters had been going full burn to reach the Nameless as quickly as possible. They would have had to shed some of that velocity to put in the attack but right now they were close to the peak of the acceleration/deceleration curve which meant their ability to radically alter course was limited. The Nameless fighters had broken into three groups and were taking a wide course out and around them. The acceleration figures showing for the Nameless fighters weren’t too impressive, so the Ravens might be able…
“Sir, that is a negative. The fighters are carrying too much velocity. If our fighters move to intercept right now the Nameless will reach the rings just before the Ravens can achieve firing range.”
“Shit! Coms, get me Admiral Lewis right now!”
Laura’s face appeared on Crowe’s screen.
“Commodore.”
“Admiral, you have Nameless fighters incoming, I believe they’re aimed at Junction…”
“Yes, that’s our assessment too,” she cut across him. “They’ve finally found something they can send into the rings and suckered us into sending out what should have been our close defence.”
Crowe glanced at the main holo. Admiral Kander had most of the Junction starships. Like the fighters they had been accelerating away from the rings, to force contact on the Nameless fleet. Like the fighters they were going to be too far away from Junction Station when the Nameless fighters reached it.
“It’s too late to block them completely so we’re going to have to settle for bleeding them anyway we can. Move your ship to these co-ordinates, fire on them as they pass Commodore. This is going to hurt unfortunately, now the only question is how much.”
_____________________
The two anti-ship missiles accelerated away from Dubious, vaguely in the direction of the Nameless Fleet before Alanna swung the nose around towards one of the groups of Nameless fighters. Around Dubious, the strike unravelled as fighters jettisoned their anti-ship missiles and started to race after the enemy fighters.
“This is Dubious to Curious and Envoy fighters. Follow my lead,” she ordered as her fingers danced over the navigation console.
“Confirmed,” the radio crackled back. But Alanna barely heard it as she worked out the optimal interception course. On the display the two lines failed to meet and instead both terminated at the rings. Close but not close enough.”
“Max out the engines?” she murmured entering new parameters. The lines got closer but half the line projected for Dubious started to flash red, indicating the point at which complete engine burn out became the most likely possibility.
“This is Dubious to flight, we aren’t going to make interception short of the rings. We’ll have to engage them inside. We’ll hold onto our anti-fighter missiles just in case they do something that keeps them on the outside but jettison them before going in. They won’t be any good in there.”
For three and a half hours Dubious chased the Nameless downwards and Alanna attempted to doze. She woke up to watch as the Nameless crossed through the outer edge of Deimos’s plasma cannon range. One fighter blinked out and they made up some of the range as the Nameless bobbed and wove to avoid. At eighty minutes before reaching the rings Dubious made the turn over and started to brake. All the while Alanna tried to come up with a plan that didn’t appear doomed to failure.
“We have nearly sixty contacts and there’s only four of us. We are going to have to split up.”
“Dubious, we stick with our wing man. That’s one of the basics,” Lieutenant Malm replied across the radio.
“Not this time Curious. If they spread out, we’re going to lose most of them. We’ll have to spread out with them. I need you to stay high with your missiles just in case some try to take the fast route over the top of the rings and then dive in when they’re over Junction.”
“Why not all go straight to Junction? If they go in from the rim we can get there ahead of them.”
“Yeah and then be sitting with no momentum when they burn past us, plus when we can see them, they’ll be able to see Junction. We won’t get enough of them. We need to be behind them, whittling them down.”
“That’s risking someone getting mobbed in there,” one of Envoy’s pilots said.
“Yeah but the engine output of those things doesn’t look very high. We’ve never seen the Nameless with guns, so right now I think we have the advantage.”
“A lot of guess work there, Dubious,” Malm replied. “How long do you want me to hold?”
“Once you hear them reach Junction, then come on in.”
Four minutes before the Nameless fighters began to enter the edge of the rings Dubious got into missile range. Alanna jammed her thumb down as the word LOCKED appeared on the HUD and all four of Dubious’s anti-fighter missiles leapt away from their mountings. The fighters from Envoy launched as well and the missiles powered down on the enemy. Most of them reached the rings except for a single unlucky fighter at the back that was hit by three as the rest disappeared from Dubious’s radar.
“Good luck everyone. See you at Junction,” Alanna said as she followed them in.
Immediately the fighter’s collision alarm started to sound as Dubious wove through. At the rim were the smaller boulders and Alanna didn’t dare to blink because at these ranges radar wasn’t good enough. The old Mk I eyeball was her best instrument.
“Anything?”
“Nothing ye… Jesus, that was close!” Schurenhofer exclaimed as Dubious skimmed past a bus-sized lump of ice and rock.
“Don’t worry. If we hit something we’ll never feel it.”
“Thank Skip. That’s… Contact! Dead ahead!”
Alanna strained her eyes as she set the systems for maximum light amplification. For several seconds there was nothing. She glanced at her radar but there was too much clutter for it to cope with. Then abruptly she caught sight of it. It must have grazed an asteroid - the lightest of touches but it had been enough to rip open the side. Her first burst went short, the second long, the Nameless fighter swerved around an asteroid before she could walk a third onto it. She swung around after it then jerked Dubious violently to port. The enemy had reversed it’s facing back at her and a single line of plasma bolts pulsed past them.
“They have guns!” shouted Schurenhofer, “how the hell do they have guns!”
Dubious flashed past before Alanna flipped her over. As the enemy appeared in her sights she fired her fixed gun and Schurenhofer joined with the two turret mounts. The three lines of plasma bolts converged and tore the fighter apart.
“This is D for Dubious to all units. Be advised enemy fighters have guns,” Alanna barked into the radio as she flipped Dubious again and continued the chase. There was no acknowledgement, just the hiss of the carrier wave. With so much rock and ice around them, the radio wasn’t going to get through.
“Looks like everyone else is going to have to find out for themselves,” Schurenhofer said. “Thermal contact at one o’clock.”
They caught and destroyed three more fighters. They were slow, unmanoeuverable and no match for a Raven fighter once the lost the element of surprise. As she closed on Junction Station Alanna could do the maths. They’d followed fifty-eight fighters in. She’d destroyed four. Even if Curious and the Envoy’s two had managed the same, that still left them facing more than forty operational enemy fighters.
“Nearly there Skipper.”
“Make sure friend or foe is online - this is going to be very crowded,” Alanna replied as Dubious passed the outer markers.
“Yeah.”
Dubious crossed into the clear area around Junction and straight into a battle zone. The first thing Alanna saw was the auxiliary cruiser Lincoln drifting slowly away from the station, flames erupting from the dozen plus breaches in her hull as escape pods launched. Dozens of Nameless fighters swirled around, seeking position before darting in. The other auxiliary, the Gaston, was hit but still firing. Her flak guns laid down a devastating barrage each time the Nameless gathered. This consumed a few fighters, but their comrades would take the opportunity to make strafing runs across the beleaguered ship.
As Alanna jerked Dubious in behind the first enemy fighter she caught sight of Junction Station. The centrifuge had an entire section blown out. Some of the storage sections had completely detached and were now drifting clear. Even as she watched another pair of missiles slammed in. Alanna lost track of her target.
“Schurenhofer,” she said in a hollow voice, “find me targets that still have their missiles. Let’s salvage what we can.”
_____________________
The Nameless fleet hovered just beyond the range of guns recovering the remains of their fighter strike. Most of the Battle Fleet ships were within firing range of the Rings when the Nameless fighters started to trickle back to their carriers. Barely a quarter made it through
the crossfire but that was at best cold comfort.
Admiral Laura Lewis lifted the oxygen mask away from her face, “The whole hydrogen purification plant went up with the first strike. The main accommodation areas are all complete write offs. Everything is burned and the heat was such that the structure is probably buckl…” she broke off coughing. A surgeon attempted to put the mask back on but she irritably waved him off.
“Is there any hope of bandaging things back together?” Kander asked. Crowe looked at the Admiral’s face on the video screen and could see by his expression that he knew what the answer was going to be. But he’d asked any way in the hope he would be wrong.
“None,” Laura croaked. “There may be a few things we can salvage but the station is a complete loss. We haven’t lost that many people - we were lucky on that point but even in the short term we don’t have the capability to sustain your squadron.”
“Fighters,” Kander said shaking his head, “we never saw that one coming.”
“Excuse me a moment,” Crowe murmured as he saw one of his pilots come into the sickbay.
Alanna looked tired as she saluted and well she might. With Junction gone there weren’t enough hangars for all the remaining Ravens. As a temporary measure they were being cycled through the hangars on the starships.
“Well?” he asked.
“We found the two skimmers, sir. One had taken a hit but they’re both still space worthy.”
“And Junction?”
Alanna shook her head, exhausted. “If it looks bad at a distance up close it’s worse. We found a hydrogen tank that was knocked clear but appears to be intact. But that was it. I’m sorry, sir, there were just so many of them we couldn’t stop them all.”
Crowe glanced back. The two admirals were still talking. Almost a hundred percent of the Junction’s squadron was still fully combat-worthy. The casualty count was probably barely into two figures. Yet this had been the fleet’s most crushing defeat since Baden. Without the base, the centre of the Junction Line was gone. The road to Earth had been reopened.
The Landfall Campaign (The Nameless War) Page 44