The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) (36 page)

“Since there will be so few crew on board, we’ve had to move some things around to allow the ship to be worked with the minimum of personnel.”

“I see,” Crowe replied as he steadied himself against the command chair and looked around. “Ah, my poor old girl, what have the bastards done to you?”

“Pardon, sir?”

“Nothing, nothing – just having a brief trip down memory lane,” he replied with a brief smile.

They hurt you
, he thought to himself as he patted the back of the seat,
hurt you when all we wanted to do was explore. Got you reduced to this... hollowed out husk. But don’t you worry girl. They hurt you and now, we’ll go and hurt them back!

___________________________

“To Operation Drumbeat,” Wingate said as he raised his glass.

“And God bless all who fight in it,” Fengzi replied as they clinked glasses.

The Council had formally signed off on the operation. For better or worse, it was now totally in the hands of the fleet. With a transit time of nearly two months, the Home Fleet would leave within days. If they had missed anything, then there was little time left in which to right it.

Wingate eyed Lewis over the top of his glass. There was no room for sentimentality, not when the stakes were so high. He’d given serious thought to removing Lewis from command. He could see the man was tired but then they all were. Operation Vindictive would be where the heaviest command load would fall. Destruction of the Spur gate station would be hard enough, yet that would be merely the start. After that, the battle of attrition would begin. In such a battle, as the fleet bled it would need a commander who could hold their nerve, an officer willing and able to look the Nameless in the eye and bleed as long as it took. For that task, the fleet had only one choice. 

“And confusion to our enemies,” Lewis added.

Chapter Sixteen

The Fury

10th March 2069 

Guinness paused as a shudder ran through
Black Prince
.

“Everything all right, Chief?” Berg asked.

“Oh yeah, Skipper,” Guinness replied after a moment. “It’s just that you have to keep an ear open for problems. This girl wasn’t exactly crafted, more duct-taped together. Not like old
Mississippi
.”

“Yes, Chief, she’s a different kind of a ship,” Berg replied as she looked around, “built for a different universe. But this one, she’s built for the one we’re living in now.”

Guinness grimaced but didn’t disagree. The two of them had been serving together under Captain Crowe when the Mississippi Incident changed everything. Berg had been shocked when she first took command to find a former shipmate aboard. She knew for a fact he’d retired out of the fleet after their previous service together, but her predecessor on
Black Prince
had, off the record, advised her not to say anything. It was solid if unnecessary advice. The Chief had always been good at his job and with the random mix of outdated components inherited by the austerities – she was a job for an older engineer.

“It was strange watching the old
Mississippi
head off without us,” Guinness reflected. “If I’d known she was going, I might have put in for a transfer. No offence, Skipper.”

“None taken,” she replied. “Of course I would have refused the request, no offence, Chief.”

“None taken.”

It had required months in dock to repair the damage to
Black Prince
. Despite Berg’s best efforts, that time had also seen a significant number of the ship’s petty officers transferred to other ships, with the result the cruiser had required even more time to work up once released from docks. A brief tour on the Junction Line hadn’t resulted in any significant combat, so this operation would be the first serious action since
Black Prince
came under ‘new management.’

“Any engineering problems I need to know about?” Berg asked as she pulled herself along the passageway.

“Nothing new,” Guinness replied as he followed. “We’re still finding blobs of escaped coolant and probably will be until the day this tin can goes to the breakers.”

Berg nodded as she looked around the portside engine room. The tour of the ship was both a chance for the crew to see and be seen by their commander and a time killer for the captain herself. Beyond
Black Prince
’s hull plating, out in the jump conduit, were their squadron mates
Saladin
and Fu Hao, the heavy cruiser
Horus
, a section of destroyers, the barrage ship
Schumann
and six fighters. All were there to provide an escort for four fast pod-droppers and the drop-carriers
Long March
and HMSS
Courageous
. The
Schumann
and a couple of the pod-droppers were new constructions, the rest veterans to a greater or lesser extent. Repair teams had only just finished replacing those pieces of the Chinese carrier that had been shot away the last time she was out.

Berg didn’t want to think about that but of course that meant her brain would fixate on it. The last time Battle Fleet had gone to Landfall had been for Operation Kite String, during which she’d been stationed on the Junction Line. On paper it was a successful operation in the face of significant opposition, but she could still remember the horror she’d felt when the losses were reported. The fact that the fleet never even attempted another resupply before the shelters fell was telling – they simply couldn’t afford another ‘victory’ like that. Now however, Intelligence thought the enemy deployment around Landfall was severely reduced and was largely composed of orbiting weapons platforms, primarily there to fire on the surface of the planet.

“It will be an interesting few hours, Skipper,” Guinness said with a sigh.

“Followed by an interesting few weeks,” Berg replied before glancing at her watch. Jump in was now an hour away. “Well, let’s get on with it Chief.

Space rippled and burst open as the jump portal formed right on the Landfall Red Line. The convoy filed back into real space. On the bridge, Berg watched intently as the first radar returns came in.

“Bridge, torpedoes away. They will be on station in eight minutes,” came the report from fire control.

“Understood,” she replied as she watched the holo.

There was no pause to settle the convoy into formation. Instead, every ship began to power towards the distant planet.

“Coms, Bridge. Signal from
Saladin
– they’re transmitting our arrival. No response from any of the planet drop sites.”

“There wouldn’t be, Coms, not yet,” Berg replied. “They’d be asking for an orbital strike if they were. They need us to clear the skies first.”

Blips appeared on the holo showing the torpedoes as they curved round to get astern of the station, ready to attack anything that tried to jump in behind them. Then further away, red blips and, beyond them, the planet Landfall.

“Tactical, Bridge. We are picking up multiple enemy contacts. Provisional count on mobile units is one cap ship, three cruisers and seven escorts. We also have readings on eight orbital weapons platforms and two cargo platforms. The Breaker’s Rock starfort is currently behind the planet.”

“Understood Tactical, keep an eye out for it,” she replied.

Berg had to wonder at the wisdom of this entire mission. The risk to ships and crews was easy to understand, but the cargo – small arms, munitions and light artillery – provided everything needed to fight the Nameless on the ground. It was not enough to win but enough to draw attention.

In fact, this entire convoy was first and foremost a provocation, designed to pull back Nameless units from the Junction Line and draw forward their more distant reserves. At roughly this moment, Second fleet was breaking Earth orbit and heading for the Junction Line. Safeguarding Earth was being left in the hands of Planetary Defence and a handful of ships that couldn’t be made ready in time. Five days from now, Second Fleet would start noisily smashing its way towards Landfall, hitting the various Nameless space gates and supply dumps identified by reconnaissance ships. 

The Nameless might choose to yield ground, but intelligence believed they would contest Landfall – their only true prize so far, if only to bleed the Second Fleet. But even there, they would find their strength being drained.

Six modified support ships had already infiltrated forwards and would at this moment be launching space mines and torpedoes into the orbits of gas giant planets that could or had served as fuelling points for the Nameless. The wells were being poisoned so now their fuel would have to be moved forward from more distant sources.

“Coms, Bridge. Enemy cruiser is transmitting on FTL Band A.”

“They know we’re here now,” Berg said quietly. “Helm, tighten us up on
Saladin
. Guns, stand by.”

___________________________

Alice
glanced up at the sky for the umpteenth time and for the umpteenth time cursed herself as an idiot. What the hell was she expecting to see? Holding at the edge of the forest, ahead of them lay the weed-choked farmlands of the former Italian colony. The beacon they’d brought with them from the main camp was set up about a kilometre from their position. She couldn’t help but cast her mind back to the last time she’d worked a drop. Then she’d had hundreds of soldiers standing between her and the Nameless. This time, they would just have to hope for the best. It really made her wish the Colonel had chosen someone else or that she’d had the sense to sit this one out. Behind her was a fifty strong group of volunteers, cream of the crop since their drop was further from the settlement than any other. She’d been surprised there had been that many. Surely any sensible person would have sat this one out. But she was there, so she could hardly judge. These were strong people. To make it this far, they’d had to be, and maybe they just wanted it all to be over, one way or another. There was some murmured conversation but most of them waited silently.

“Why can we not say: we’ve done our bit, good luck and let us know how it turns out?” Alice asked the Colonel in the privacy of the command tent.

“We’re still stakeholders in this,” he replied, “in fact more so than most people. This, this lifestyle…” he waved a hand vaguely, “it’s not sustainable. Not in the truly long run. If we don’t get the Nameless off this planet, well, none of us will die of old age.”

Alice made no reply. She knew what he was gesturing towards – the hidden farms, the dispersed settlements, the three thousand people they’d so far managed to gather, feed and protect. But it was slowly falling... no, drifting apart. People, good people, were dying of illnesses that should have been treatable. Their farming was little better than subsistence level. Just one pest infestation or blight could leave them without enough calories to go round. Finally, you could smell the fear every time a Nameless gunboat went over.

“It will be volunteers only, of course. No point trying to draft people that don’t want to be there, but I’d like you to lead one of the collection groups,” the Colonel had continued. “What marine resources I have are best deployed on decoy raids. The drops are just so damn vulnerable, we have to give the bastards something else to worry about – unless you want to pick up a rifle and start shooting.”

“You keep putting undue influence on this scrap of material,” she replied, tapping the threadbare corporal’s stripes on her sleeve as she looked at the map.

“And you don’t put enough emphasis on them. I know you prefer to think of yourself as an academic but you aren’t, not any more. You’ve kept people alive under the most difficult of circumstances and that puts you well ahead of some of military history’s leading lights. I just need you to keep doing that.”

“And you think a few rifles and bombs will make us meaningful? I mean a couple of hundred marines against...”

“Nothing we do, even if we were fully equipped and up to strength, would win the war on its own,” he replied. “Wars aren’t won by single great deeds – I doubt they ever were. No, instead we try to nibble each other to death. A few rifles and bombs will allow us to nibble that little bit harder.”

Alice
jumped as the small radio at her hip started to click sharply and looked down the line of people.

“Everyone listen up! We’ve just got the first signal,” she alerted them. “The convoy is entering orbit. Get ready.” She glanced up at the sky again. “We’ll have to move fast.”

“Yeah, at bloody light speed,” someone muttered.

“Just keep a look out,” she replied sharply as her radio continued to click.

The frequency was increasing as the starships above closed. He wasn’t wrong though. Descending drop pods would be a giant signal to the Nameless that ‘Humans Are Here’ and that was if they were lucky. If unlucky, that sign would read ‘Bombard Us From Orbit Now.’ Two pods were supposed to come down and they would have to move fast once they left the protection of the woods to covered the open ground, retrieve the cargo and get it and themselves back to the trees. If they were caught in the open, they’d be massacred – and all for the sake of a few bloody guns.

The click cut out and was replaced by a long squeal. She flipped it onto another channel and transmitted. A moment later it began to ping as their beacon went active.

“We’re on.”

___________________________

The last of the weapon satellites blew as a volley of plasma bolts crashed through it. The Nameless ships had broken orbit as soon as they sighted the convoy and were firing from long range, but their small number of ships couldn’t put out enough fire to break through the escort’s counter fire. Once an asteroid destined to be harvested for metal and now a Nameless starfort, Breaker’s Rock might have made a difference. Taking account of its position locked at the Lagrange point between Landfall and the planet’s moon, they’d timed their jump in to deprive their foe the opportunity to fire for as long as possible. As it orbited into sight it unleashed its first volley.

Even though she had been expecting it, the sheer volume of fire still made Berg gasp. The Nameless had clearly upgraded the fort since Kite String and ten Nameless cap ships couldn’t have matched the weight of missiles it unleashed.

But this was what the barrage ship
Schumann
and the Myth Class cruiser
Horus
had come for. As the storm of missiles bore down on them,
Schumann
began to work up to her maximum rate of fire, her flanks rippling as she fired dozens of explosive charges. The aliens’ missile salvo smashed headlong into a wall of overlapping explosions and nothing but fragments got through.

As
Schumann
absorbed everything the fort could throw,
Horus
gave it back. The range was long but Breakers had no capacity to manoeuvre. Against one of the few ships to retain her heavy calibre railguns, the starfort was a sitting duck. There was no way to know whether its garrison even saw the small high velocity projectiles before they began to slam home. Little more than space cannon balls, the metal heavy asteroid was sturdy enough to absorb the first few strikes. But as successive projectiles continued to hammer the target, cracks appeared across the surface. Then fragments began to detach from the fringes of the asteroid and the stream of missiles suddenly spluttered out as Breakers Rock abruptly shattered, spilling wrecked equipment and stricken Nameless soldiers into space.