The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) (11 page)

“That isn’t even close to the fuel efficiency the book says we should get.”

“The book wasn’t written with our combination of equipment in mind, ma’am,” Guinness said. “We didn’t get a shakedown cruise, so we didn’t get a chance to find the optimum setting either, which isn’t helping. But mostly ma’am, I think whoever signed off those engines as reconditioned, did the fucking bare minimum and figured the job’s a good ’un. Pardon my language.”

They were already getting some pointed messages from both Headquarters and the flagship of the fleet. Guinness was damn a good engineer, but he had his limits.

“If we could get a bit of downtime – proper downtime, then there’s a lot I could do.”

“What’s proper downtime, Chief?” Willis asked.

“Two weeks.”

“Chief, that isn’t even worth asking for,” she replied. “Is there anything you can do while we’re in the line?”

“Section three in the report, Skipper.”

Willis skimmed across it.

“Alright, proceed.” She hesitated as she considered what to say next. “Chief, I want you to take a really close look at Number One Reactor. Make sure it has no problems.”

“Sure, I can do. But it hasn’t…”

“We aren’t bringing Number Two online when the Nameless turn up next. We’ll just have to chance it.”

Guinness’s expression tightened.

“Okay, Skipper, I’ll give it a double check.”

18th January 2068 

Alanna climbed wearily out of the cockpit of
Dubious
and signed over the fighter to the deck crew. She glanced over at the scorch marks on the port wing and shook her head. Schurenhofer didn’t even glance as she pulled herself towards the hatch out of the hangar.

“Skipper, you want me to…” she started to ask.

“No. No point both of us. Just go,” Alanna said, more sharply than she meant to. Schurenhofer looked for a moment, as if she was about to make her own steely reply, but shrugged instead. 

As she cleared the airlock Alanna pulled off her helmet and loosened the neck dam. She had maybe three hours before
Dubious
needed to fly off again. Debrief for this mission, briefing for the next and prep would eat up an hour of that – at least. So how best use the time? Eat, sleep or wash – pick any two.

“Get anything?”

It took Alanna’s tired brain a moment to realise someone had addressed her. It was Udaltsov, his helmet on but visor up. He looked just as tired as she felt.

“Swing and a miss,” she replied. “They didn’t have fighter cover and jumped away as soon as they saw us.”

Udaltsov shrugged and carried on down the passageway. Conversations had gone that way. No one had the energy for anything beyond the bare minimum. They were three days into a four-day cycle.
Dauntless
jumped into the system, well clear of any of the planets. After the first day the Nameless hadn’t stood still and let Earth throw its entire fighter force at them. Instead their fleet jumped back and forth across the system, maintaining the siege, without giving the defenders a solid target to aim at. Sometimes a chunk of the fleet would break away and rendezvous with support ships. That need to resupply was potentially their Achilles heel, but the Nameless knew that too. Their supply ships always stayed at least two light hours away from Earth. By the time the fleet sensors detected them, they’d already jumped away to a new position. The three carriers stood more of a chance. Jumping around the system, they could get closer and be subject to shorter light speed lags. Sometimes they were sent out as squadrons, but mostly as individual flights. Something like two out of every five sorties resulted in contact. When that happened, it was short and sharp as the Ravens attempted to knife through the fighter screen to get into range for anti-ship missiles. But the hunt wasn’t just one way. Nameless cruiser squadrons hunted the carriers. They’d come close to making an interception several times and on the last such occasion
Dauntless
was forced to break for interstellar space, which had at least confirmed the long held suspicion that the Nameless drives were strictly for system to system jumps. Interstellar space was a no-go zone for them. 

Climbing up and into the centrifuge, Alanna walked into the debriefing room and dropped her helmet on the intelligence officer’s desk.

“Well?” he asked.

“Nothing at our primary target,” she said as she flopped into a chair. “We sighted support ships at the secondary, but they jumped away just as we arrived. Are you writing this down?”

The last part she said in an exasperated tone.

“I’m waiting for your weapons controller.”

“She isn’t coming – I told her not to. You don’t need to hear the same damn thing in stereo.”

“You’re supposed to both be here for debrief,” his voice rose angrily.

“And you’re supposed to put us onto a target,” she shouted back “not have us farting around out there for hours on end!”

“All hands! Brace for in system jump! Brace for in system jump!” the intercom system suddenly announced. Both of them gripped the table as the carrier jolted in and out of jump space. He gave her a disgusted look and hurried away. With the shift in position the intelligence section would be taking stock of the readings from the passive sensors. Udaltsov’s flight would be launching to provide cover if something was too close, while Dati’s would be ready to fly off on a strike mission.

She should probably have waited for the intelligence officer to return and complete his debrief, but that wasn’t about to happen. Picking her helmet up, she headed for the mess.

Schurenhofer was already eating by the time she arrived. Alanna joined Jacka in the queue for food. The other pilot had been a rookie when she arrived on
Dauntless
. Now she was a veteran and fighter ace several times over. Aside from Alanna and Schurenhofer, she was the only member of the original flight still around. Andrews disappeared on day ten, when they got involved in a dogfight over Neptune. No one saw what happened to him. Ponta’s fighter lost its jump drive close to Saturn. It was fifty-fifty but he might have made the real space passage to one of the orbital forts before the fighter’s environmental support packed up. Two replacement crews had reached them. One was lost within a day of their arrival.

With food on her plate Alanna found a seat and started to eat. There wasn’t much talk in the canteen. It might not have been as tough for the carrier crew as the flight crews, but they weren’t having it easy either. If nothing else, it wore on their nerves, spending days in enemy territory, in which a hostile force could jump in at any moment.

“Hey, you’re supposed to eat it, not sleep in it!”

Looking round, Alanna saw Jacka, further down the table, her eyes closed, her head slowly dropped and settled into her plate.

Someone guffawed and Jacka jerked upright. A piece of mushroom dropped off her chin. She glared around the room with red-rimmed eyes filled with belligerence. The compartment went silent, the humour of the previous moment lost. Jacka threw down her cutlery and stalked out. The Lieutenant’s weapons controller looked to Alanna, clearly wondering whether he should go after her. Alanna shook her head. People returned to their meals. Such incidents were now too common to be worth mentioning. Exhaustion did funny things to people. Normally easy-going individuals became snappy, ready to take offence where none was intended. Two other pilots on Udaltsov’s flight were close friends, but now, every time they spoke to each other, they did so with studied politeness, as if they were afraid that their last words in this life might be ones of anger.

The intelligence officer walked into the mess and started towards the food service area, only to alter his course towards Alanna as soon as he saw her.

If he whines about briefing I’ll… Alanna thought. She could feel herself getting hot as her temper began to go.

“Lieutenant,” he said, “we just picked up a transmission from the American starfort
Cold Harbour
. Lieutenant Ponta made it.”

It took her a moment to work out what he was talking about.

“I didn’t think he would,” she replied, as the heat of her anger dissipated.

“They cut oxygen flow to the point where it was just enough to keep them alive provided they didn’t move,” he said before shrugging. “Even with that, they only landed with less than an hour of air left. Still they made it.”

Alanna smiled for what felt like the first time in years.

20th January 2068
 

Snow crunched underfoot as he stepped out through the small door onto the flat roof. Europe was experiencing its hardest winter in twenty years, although compared to what he’d seen in some parts of the States, it was barely worth mentioning.

“Oh yeah,” said Jeff Harlow as he set down the camera tripod and sat-phone case. “This is the spot.”

“Why don’t you leave that determination to the professional there, champ?” said his camerawoman Marie, as she laboured up the stairs. “And more to the point, would you mind shifting your overpaid self out of the way?”

Jeff did as he was told and Marie stepped onto the hotel’s flat roof and looked around. It wasn’t a very tall building, but then
London wasn’t a very tall city. The sun was setting fast and the metropolis was already lit up.

“You’ve got to wonder why they waited until this time. Surely it would have been better to do it during the day?” Marie asked, as she carefully set her camera bag down.

“With the Brits, God knows. Union rules or an attempt to drum up the spirit of Dunkirk,” Jeff replied as he rubbed his shoulder. The six months he’d spent in deep space covering the fighting on the Junction Line had definitely caused some muscle loss. He should have done more exercise, but he’d never been much good at that. Not much point in saying anything though. Marie was twice his age but built like a brick shithouse – so much mockery would ensue. He wasn’t about to make that mistake, not twice anyway.

“Spirit of what?”

“Never mind.”

“Well let’s get this set up. They won’t wait for us,” she grunted as she kicked open the camera tripod.

“Yeah,” Jeff replied, looking out across the city, “This will be first take stuff. Mind you, when you’ve done filming in combat…”

“Yes! Yes! YES!” Marie cut in with mock exasperation. “I know about your war heroics!”

Jeff grinned. Something landed in his hair.

“Snowing again,” he observed

“Good. It adds to the ambience.”

“Oy! Is anyone up there?” came a shout from the stairs down into the hotel.

“Yeah, Richard, we are,” Marie shouted back.

There was the thump of feet on the stairs and Richard, the film crew manager, emerged onto the roof.

“I wondered where you’d got to,” Jeff said. “Where’s Jennifer? Time’s a bit short if we’re to get those shots.”

“Guys, can you put everything down for a minute,” Richard said.

His tone immediately got Jeff’s attention. When he’d been with the fleet, it was always bad news when people talked like that.

“Richard, where’s Jen?” Marie asked trying to look past him. Jennifer was their makeup girl and gopher – and she wasn’t on the stairs behind Richard.

“I got a phone call about an hour ago from the airline. Our flight and our tickets have been cancelled.”

“What!” Jeff exclaimed. “But they were supposed to run until Tuesday!”

“Yeah,” Richard said grimly. “The thing is, a couple of governments have started requisitioning fuel from their airports. It looks like the crews got scared that they would find themselves stranded in the ass end of nowhere – probably right to be. Our plane is being used to get flight crews and embassy staff back to the States.”

“When!” Jeff asked

Richard glanced at his watch. “About twenty minutes ago.”

“And you didn’t call us!” Marie shouted at him furiously.

“Look! They were only prepared to give us one seat,” Richard shouted back. “Just one! And the plane was taking off as soon as it was full. You two weren’t there so the only choices were me or Jen.” He paused before continuing more calmly. “Jen has a young family so I threw her into a cab to Heathrow. She made it, just about.” He looked back and forth at the two of them. “I made a call guys and I think I made the right one.”

“Well shit!” Marie said in a tone now more disgusted than angry.

“So where does that leave us then?” Jeff asked, as Marie circled the roof cursing and kicking. “Any chance of getting another flight?”

“Not a prayer,” Richard said shaking his head. “Even airline staff that live here are being told to go home.”

“You told them we are a film crew?”

“Oh yeah. But that was no currency.”

“So... what now? The embassy?”

“Probably closed and we’ve got a better option,” Richard said, shaking his head. “I ran into the hotel manager on the way up.”

“I thought he said he was closing up,” Jeff said.

The hotel mostly catered to business customers. In the past three days the place had become increasingly quiet as guests left without being replaced. This morning, there had only been one other person at breakfast and Jeff had seen him check out afterwards. The same was true of the staff – there appeared to be only one or two still around. In fact the city as a whole was shutting down. Most shops had pulled down their shutters more than a week ago and the supermarkets were mostly cleaned out. Only the shops that sold camping and survival gear still seemed to have trade and even they were closing now.