The Landfall Campaign (The Nameless War) (31 page)

“
It’s alright Douglas,
”
Jeff replied diplomatically.
“
I’m sure I can do the piece later.
”
As soon as Jeff had stepped on board, Driscoll had made clear that he was there under sufferance. Still he was okay to deal with so long as Jeff handled him diplomatically.

“
Can I have it back if something happens? You know if there’s some action?
”
he asked politely. Driscoll looked up at him.

“
If you hear me order the engines go full burn, then you can have it back,
”
he said pointing. Jeff’s camera was tethered to the deckhead above him.

“
Thank…
”
Jeff started to say but Driscoll hadn
’
t finished.

“
But if there is any journalistic creative mishearing of me, I’ll stuff you into a storage module for the rest of the sweep. Got it?
”

“
Got it.
”

Always the way. Pleasantries and diplomacy aside, he was still the outsider here.

Twenty minutes later he was being reminded of the other fundamental fact of space travel: it was really boring.

He was standing looking over Driscoll’s shoulder at his screen. It was a small hologram display showing a multicoloured sphere, mostly shades of blue with one small bright red patch and another of orange. To the amusement of a few crewmembers, on his first trip Jeff had mistaken these for ships and thought they were about to come under fire, but fortunately they turned out to be local star emissions. He’d endeavoured since then not to make himself look foolish. Watching the crew at work he’d learned a few things. The smaller of the two coloured patches indicated a planet, while the orange colour made it a gas giant. Which for some reason seemed to be the kind of planet
K7
spent a lot of time around.

“
Skipper, I’m picking up a faint variance off the starboard side,
”
one of the crewmen at the sensor displays spoke up. Jeff had begun to doze and woke with a start.

“
What’s the variance?
”
Driscoll asked.

“
Faint infrared, plus charged particles. It’s a three percent variance over background noise.
”

Driscoll started to look interested.

“
Alright Mister Headey, please give processing priority to the starboard facing.
”

“
Yes sir,
”
said someone else on the bridge.

It
’
s like listening to a foreign bloody language,
Jeff thought to himself, not for the first time. He took out his paper notepad and pencil and started taking some notes. The first time out on
K7
he’d brought along a computer terminal to do his writing on, but that was promptly taken off him on grounds it emitted
‘
detectable electrical emissions’, one of the two great obsessions of the courier’s crew. The other was acceleration. When he first came aboard, Utzon had taken almost macabre pleasure in showing him a graph that demonstrated how the extra mass of him and his gear had made their best possible acceleration curve slightly shallower. Paper and pencil had solved the first problem. He couldn’t do anything about the second one though.

“
Contacts bearing three, two, one dash zero, zero three. Two definite contacts, unknown number of further possibles. No sign of IFF returns.
”
The report was made in a calm voice but even Jeff could appreciate that this was something a little more serious.

Driscoll rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“
Range?
”
he asked.

“
Approximately seven light seconds. Position, in the region of the Blue Line, can’t say which side though.
”

“
Can we make a quiet approach?
”

“
I believe so sir,
”
replied the helmsman.
“
As long as we do it in the next twenty minutes, we can make a low power turn, sir.
”

“
Very well. Mister Headey, spool in the towed array. Helm, make the turn as soon as the array is retracted, manoeuvring engines only,
”
he ordered before looking up at Jeff.
“
This might be interesting.
”

“
If you say so,
”
Jeff replied quietly,
“
I must admit, I don’t understand half of what you’re saying.
”
He’d been taking notes, but he’d have to wait until he got back into proper light before he found out how much of it was legible. 

There was a brief gleam of white teeth as Driscoll grinned at him.

“
It takes a while to learn the lingo.
”

There was a whirr of machinery from astern.

“
Sir, we’re losing the contacts.
”

Jeff expected Driscoll to look worried but he merely nodded.

“
Isn’t that a problem?
”
he tentatively asked.

“
No, what we’re getting is coming through our towed passive array,
”
Driscoll explained.
“
It’s towed astern of us on fifteen-hundred metres of cable, which puts it further away from any interference from the ship.
”

“
I see.
”

“
It doesn
’
t have much mass, but it mucks up manoeuvring if it’s still spooled out when we try to turn.
”
As the Lieutenant spoke, Jeff realised that in fact Driscoll was concerned. There was a nervous energy in the Lieutenant, which was expressing itself through talk.
“
The other thing is if it is left spooled out, we’d likely fry it with our engine plume. But with it in, we’re relying on the ship’s built in passive sensors, which means we’re basically blind.
”

The whine from astern stopped.

“
The array
’
s run in, sir,
”
reported Headey.

“
Helm. Make the turn when you’re ready.
”

K7
turned and Jeff was forced to grab wildly for a hand bar as one of his boot magnets lost traction.

“
As soon as we’ve stabilised our track, spool the array back out again. Helm, keep an eye on the radiators.
”

“
Aye sir.
”
came two separate replies.

“
Radiators?
”
Jeff murmured as the mechanical whine started up again.

“
We have to radiate off our waste heat. If we use the radiator facing away from the contact, then hopefully they won’t spot us. Now hush up,
”
Driscoll replied, Jeff hadn’t realised he’d spoken.

Five days out from Junction Station, we have perhaps finally found our quarry.
Jeff found himself shifting into newscast mode.
We are currently orbiting the planet
…
he’d have to check its name afterwards,
and we have detected something at the edge of our sensor range. Now we are altering course to investigate. In doing so we have both blinded ourselves and made it more likely that we will be detected. These are as you can appreciate tense moments.

That was good, Jeff thought to himself, very good in fact. He needed to get it down before he forgot it. Okay he
’
d still need filmed pictures of the action but he could probably talk Driscoll into restaging that later. His pencil scratched furiously on the paper.

“
Contact reacquired,
”
reported one of the sensor operators.

“
Any change in profile?
”

“
That’s
…
negative, sir. The profiles remain constant.
”

“
Run a track projection. How close are we going to get?
”
Driscoll asked.

“
Calculating now, sir.
”
There was a pause, just long enough for Jeff to catch up with events.
“
We’re going to get to within somewhere between one point one and one point two light seconds of the contacts, sir. Closest convergence will be in approximately one-hundred-and-ten minutes.
”

“
That’s plenty close enough,
”
Driscoll said half to himself.

We have completed our turn without apparent detection. Now comes the careful approach, to gather whatever information is available.
That wasn’t quite as good and two hours was way too long to keep the viewer interested. He’d have to brush over that in the recording.

“
It’s definitely three contacts, sir,
”
said the sensor operator.
“
Two are Nameless escorts and the third doesn’t match any known profile.
”

Jeff had kind of expected a eureka moment when suddenly they were close enough to see all. Instead it was a slow, boring-to-watch, process where the quality of the information they were getting only gradually improved.

“
Ship?
”
asked Driscoll, who had unbelted himself from his seat and been looking over the shoulder of the senior sensor operator for about an hour.

“
I don’t think so, sir,
”
the operator replied.
“
We’re getting pretty clear solar reflection from the escorts. The third one is giving very little reflection and showing no sign of engine emissions.
”

“
Anything else?
”

“
They’re just beyond the Blue Line, sir. So they can presumably jump out at any time.
”

“
What about cameras. Are we close enough for the cameras?
”

“
We’re in the planet’s shadow, so we’re still not getting much, sir. Estimate another twenty minutes before we get anything useful.
”

“
New contacts!
”
called out another sensor operator.
“
Three contacts bearing two, six, three dash zero, zero, one.
”
Driscoll spun around at the call.
“
Range four light seconds, they
’
re climbing away from the planet.
”

“
What’s their track?
”
Driscoll snapped.

“
Their current track will see them rendezvous with the first three in about an hour.
”

Jeff continued to watch the fleet personnel at work, trying to describe the mood and the feel of the moment to his future audience. When he looked down the page though, it was covered with words like
‘
slow
’
,
‘
steady
’
and
‘
careful
’
. This was probably another bit that would need either brushed over or sexed up.

It was only as they reached the point of their closest approach that the external cameras could finally get a decent picture. There were two escorts, floating motionless in space. Jeff had already seen fleet released publicity shots of Nameless ships just like these, including some exciting images of ones coming apart under fire. However this was his first time seeing humanity
’
s enemy in the flesh, so to speak. All of the pictures were in greyscale as the computer apparently wasn
’
t programmed to add colour. Whichever crewman was controlling the camera seemed to be more interested in the third object however and even Jeff could see that this was something new. He cast his camera a brief longing look, before starting to draw what he could see. Who’d have ever though those school art classes would prove useful?

It seemed to be an open lattice structure, shaped like a ring, with a boxy bit on top. There seemed to be pointy bits on the inner surface of the ring directed inwards. If he didn
’
t get hold of a picture he
’
d have to get Driscoll to give a proper military description.
‘
Pointy bits
’
lacked a certain something.