“So I see,” the manager grunted examining his notes.
“There are still bits of radiator fluid in here – hard stuff to catch in micro gravity,” Willis said as she approached.
Guinness saluted as sharply as was possible without gravity. The foreman gave her a perfunctory nod.
“How long do you think this will take?” she asked.
The man gave a weary sigh.
“Y’know we’ve only been on this tin can for less than a full watch. We’re still doing a damage analysis and reviewing the paperwork your officers handed over.”
“Yes, but I have to forward your estimate to Fleet Headquarters,” Willis replied. “They’ll want to know when they can have their ship back.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he replied sourly. “Don’t tell me – there’s a war on.”
He sighed and looked around again.
“Okay, we have to remove and replace most of the armour anyway, so that makes access into the ship easier. The main turrets are all intact, which is good. Within the main citadel we’re mostly talking about splinter damage. That’s not so good. The problem with splinters is that you have to start pulling things open just to make sure nothing took a ricochet and clouted something without anyone noticing. And as for your liquid problem in here…”
He paused to wave his stylus around the engine room.
“We’ll have to be really sure we’ve got that sorted. We’ll likely have to over-pressurise the deck, then pop a hatch and blow it out. We’ll need a tug on station though, to keep the platform stable. My guesstimate is four months, assuming we don’t come across any surprises.”
Willis nodded. She’d be surprised if Black Prince was combat worthy in fewer than six months. But better the dockyard did it properly than rush them back out only for something to crap out. Still, four months was a long time for the crew to be kept active and still part of her command.
“This would all be easier if we could put the crew off,” the manager suggested.
“It would be even easier if we hadn’t been shot at so much in the first place,” Guinness grunted.
“True. But we’ll move people around to make sure we can work without someone ending up breathing vacuum.”
Willis’s intercom beeped and she flicked it on.
“Willis here.”
“Captain, this is officer of the day. A communication has come through from Headquarters for you – high priority.”
“Alright, I’m on my way up. Chief, there’s a few things I need to discuss with you,” before turning to the manager and adding: “Thank you. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other over the next few months.”
“No dockyard type ever likes to be told that by a skipper,” Guinness said as they pulled their way back towards the centrifuge.
Willis smiled.
“I know, Chief. It’s just a question of mithering them enough to get the job done fast, without being so much that they throw a sulk.”
“That’s an art,” Guinness replied as he guided himself around a ladder. “My last skipper, Crowe, he was an expert at it. He could talk a dock manager into doing something he didn’t want to do and have him convince he’d received a favour.”
There weren’t many crew on the bridge. With Black Prince in dock, there wasn’t much for the duty watch to do, other than be ready for any kind of an emergency.
“I’ve forwarded it to your screen at your chair, Ma’am,” the duty officer said as Willis entered the bridge.
She sat down and entered her authorisation code to access the message. Guinness was talking about some technical detail but as Willis read and reread, his voice became just a background drone.
“So I’ll need a decision on that one, Skipper,” Guinness finished.
But Willis just stared into the middle distance, her finger drumming lightly on her chair armrest.
“Skipper?” he asked carefully.
Willis had been a prickly individual when they’d first met but over the last year and a half, she’d mellowed a lot. Still, the after effects of combat could take people unexpectedly. Willis gave a long sigh and her eyes unglazed.
“I’m afraid that’s not for me to decide Chief, not any more,” she said. “I’m being relieved of command.”
When the captain of a ship was on the bridge, every one always had at least half an ear tuned to whatever they said. All extraneous noise abruptly stopped.
“A Commander Berg will be taking charge at eleven hundred hours tomorrow,” Willis continued in a slightly hollow voice. “I’m to present myself at the Starforge Platform for reassignment.”
“Berg? I served with her on the old Mississippi,” Guinness said before sticking out his hand. “It will be a promotion,” he said firmly. “Congratulations. And by the way, I wish to request reassignment to your new command.”
The Chief was probably right. Willis thought to herself as she packed her kit for transport. Aside from the latest versions of certain gadgets, she didn’t own much. She’d never been one for physical possessions and of what she’d had, quite a bit had been lost on the old Hood. She didn’t even have her own home dirtside, just a storage locker. When she did land for leave, she generally stayed with either her parents or in a hotel. But now, after packing everything she had on board in less than ten minutes, Willis couldn’t help but wonder whether it was time to try to put down some kind of permanent roots and have a home that wouldn’t be taken away from her at any moment.
There was no sense in getting paranoid. She’d been a very visible part of the operation that had saved Earth. She’d made her part work, so logically, at the very least, this had to be a sideways move. But just before the war her career had been about to go off the rails. Perversely, the conflict had salvaged her prospects, although the memory of seeing her career hopes crumble had left scars every bit as deep as combat. When she read that message, her initial assumption was that it represented something bad. In some respects it was. She might be leaving her successor with a banged up ship but equally this Commander Berg was inheriting a good crew. To his disappointment, she’d had to decline Guinness’s request. She could hardly take him without knowing where she was going.
“I relieve you,” Commander Berg said crisply.
“I stand relieved, Ma’am,” Willis replied before saluting sharply and stepping back as the Berg turned and sat carefully down on the captain’s chair. The really important parts of command handover – transfer of computer codes and the ship’s formal papers – had happened shortly after the Commander boarded. Willis took her successor through key points she needed to be aware of, the kind of personnel issues that didn’t show up in the formal documents and all the other details a new captain needed to have. Across the ship, all work ceased while the new captain gave a short speech across the intercom. It was a fairly standard address of the sort that ticked its way through the checklist: proud to join you, thank you to the former incumbent, big shoes to fill, glorious (though in Black Prince’s case short) history, a hopefully glorious future…. blah, blah, blah.
It wasn’t fair to take her ill humour out on Berg. Although she’d never been good at reading people, Willis guessed her replacement had been just as surprised to be transferred as she was. From a combat worthy destroyer to a banged up Austerity probably didn’t feel like much of a promotion to Berg. The question for Willis was: what awaited her? Berg’s speech ended and the ensuing round of polite applause caught Willis by surprise, leaving her to join in belatedly.
With formalities over, it was time to leave and although Berg showed all appropriate respect, Willis could tell she was eager to see her on her way. There could only be one queen-bee in the hive.
“Good luck with your next posting, Captain,” Berg said, offering a hand as they paused at the personnel access hatch.”
“And you, Commander,” Willis replied shaking it. “Sorry I couldn’t hand her over in better condition, but at least with a new skipper, they are less likely to try to strip personnel
off you as well.”
She took one final looked around before leaning in and quietly adding: “Look after them Commander.”
Built during the Contact War, Starforge Platform had originally been a construction dockyard. Growth in ship size had long since rendered it obsolete for that purpose and instead it had been repurposed as the fleet’s orbital administrative personnel centre. When Willis stepped off the shuttle, the place was a riot of activity. A staff officer found her about an hour after arrival and hustled her in to see Admiral Clarence, the fleet’s head of personnel.
All large organisations had a few characters in them and Admiral Clarence was one of the fleet’s. With a huge ginger moustache and an upper class English accent, he looked and sounded like he’d escaped from the early half of the previous century.
“Ah, Captain,” he said as she was shown in. “Please sit down. You look like you could do with a good cup of tea. Unfortunately I’ve never come across a good cup in orbit, so you’ll have to settle for a mediocre one. Milk? Sugar?”
“Just milk, thank you, sir.”
Once she was settled, the Admiral resumed his seat.
“I owe you an apology, Captain. One of these days I will at least try to give you a posting with some decent notice.” Clarence sat back in his seat. “I would imagine that your focus over the last few weeks has probably been inwards. However, I’m sure you’re aware that a significant number of ships have been deployed to perform reconnaissance beyond the Junction Line, even some to find out what’s left of Landfall, which unfortunately, I’m sure won’t be much.”
Willis nodded. The first deployments had started within a fortnight of the end of the Siege of Earth. Most ships were moving forward to re-establish the former Junction Line, but if the grapevine was to be believed, some were going much further.
“Well, in its infinite wisdom and mercy, Headquarters has decided that three small task-forces are to be sent out, not just past our former borders, but past the Centaur planet, to directly find the Nameless themselves.”
Now Willis’s interest was really peaked. After the Mississippi Incident but before Baden, she’d been part of the original expedition to find the Nameless. They hadn’t found them but they had come across their handiwork.
“Well, as you can appreciate Captain, this is real deep space work so suitable ship classes at our disposal are fairly limited. In addition, what with the war and everything, we’ve been struggling to manage the usual circulation of postings. There are quite a few officers who’ve been in post for too long already. I needed to make some redeployments before ships get sent out on missions that will take months.
“Which is where we get to you,” Clarence continued. “Black Prince will be out of commission for months, but between Gauntlet and Dryad, you’ve turned a few heads and Headquarters isn’t willing to have you sitting around twiddling your thumbs while your ship is being duct-taped back together.”
He picked up a computer pad and handed it to her.
“I am therefore giving you command of the scout cruiser Spectre.”
Willis caught her breath at that. Spectre wasn’t a broken-down relic or something bodged together from of spare parts. A dedicated raiding cruiser, she was fast, discrete and just the sort of ship Willis had dreamed of commanding from the day she joined the fleet.
“Thank you, sir,” she said.
“She is currently under the command of Captain Weixian. He’s a fine officer but has been skippering her for five continuous years now. He was already due for a spell in a ground posting when the balloon went up. There hasn’t been a suitable opportunity before now in which to slot in a replacement. If we’re to be honest, right now still isn’t the best time for a new CO, but you have a track record for hitting the ground running, which makes you eminently suitable.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Clarence smiled.
“You won’t have much time to warm up. As I said I do promise one of these days to give you a posting with more than forty-eight hours’ notice.”
Guinness had been right after all. This was a step up. Spectre was a larger, more prestigious ship. However as the shuttle took her out to her new command, Willis couldn’t help but reflect that for all their modernity, Spectre and her sister ship Phantom were fighting a war they were ill equipped for.
Although Spectre was bigger than a Myth class cruiser, she carried less armament than the much smaller Black Prince. Designed as a long-range raider against the Aèllr, she was heavily stealthed and gave over more of her internal volume to fuel and stores. What she didn’t have though was suitable hard points on the hull to mount flak guns, so instead, the fleet’s engineers had built racks onto the cruisers’ wings to carry Starfox anti-fighter missiles. These offered Spectre some degree of active defence against Nameless cap ship missiles and could, she felt, be taken as a testament to the human ability to improvise from what was to hand. It was probably no wonder though, Willis thought to herself as she read through the briefing documents, that Spectre and Phantom had between them wracked up a higher than average officer burnout rate. When the shit hit the fan, even flak guns could feel like a pretty insubstantial defence, so a few retrofitted missiles would seem like even more of a fig leaf.
When she reached Spectre, she discovered that if Commander Berg had both been startled by and possibly not entirely pleased by her transfer, by contrast Captain Weixian was a man who knew it was time to leave and was profoundly grateful to do so. So six hours after handing over Black Prince, Willis was on the opposite side of the ceremony.
“How are you settling in Captain?” Admiral Nisman asked as Willis circulated around the small briefing room in the fleet’s groundside Headquarters. The staff officers were still setting up for the meeting and Admiral Wingate had yet to arrive, so the various officers present were free to socialise. As well as fleet officers there was a pair of marines. With the defeat at Landfall, Fleet Marines were now a rare breed, with those that remained fully engaged in training and rebuilding the Corps.
“Well sir,” she replied. “Captain Weixian had his ship in fine order.”
Unquestionably true. After being launched into two successive commands where everyone on board was new to the ship, it was slightly intimidating to be the only new arrival. But only slightly. It hadn’t taken the ship’s crew long to familiarise themselves with her combat record and work out she was far from an unproven commander. A week of manoeuvres out beyond Mars’ orbit was going a long way toward acclimatising her to the ship and vice-versa.
“Good,” Nisman replied. “As the scout cruiser, you’ll be the one out in front so I’ll need you to be sharp. How are you settling with your new officers?”
Willis kept the smile on her face but inwardly winced. Interpersonal relations were important for deep space work... and there were things in her formal history that would suggest that was something she could have problems with.
“No problems sir,” she replied. “I’ve had a lot of experience since the Harbinger mission – a lot of time to learn from past mistakes.”
Nisman nodded, apparently satisfied.
“Deep space work is hard going,” he said. “I commanded the Rhine on a pure exploration voyage back in the fifties. They were great days, no question about it, but a lonely job for a skipper. At least this time you’ll have fellow captains around.”
“That leaves you out again, sir.”
“That’s what I get paid the big money for, Captain. But I am looking forward to finding out where we’re going.”
“Into the black, Amiz.”
Willis turned towards the speaker and came sharply to attention.
“Well I sort of assumed as much, sir.” Nisman replied mildly. “But I hope you will at least point us in at least the general direction you want us to go.”
“And cramp your creativity?” Wingate said with a smile. “Don’t worry, we’ll at least find an interesting star to point you at.” Glancing at Willis, he added: “Well, let’s get
on with it, Captain.”
With Wingate’s arrival, the other officers present started to take their seats. Once everyone was settled, Wingate took his place at the head of the room.
“Gentlemen,” he began. “I would like to first offer you an overview of the war situation as it stands. While the Battle for Earth was a great victory, the greatest in fact Battle Fleet has ever won, it has not given us everything we had hoped for. While the Nameless were routed from this solar system, it would appear that their surviving units recovered fleet cohesion much faster than we expected. In essence their retreat became orderly very quickly. Very few of their transport ships were lost in the fighting. In the immediate aftermath, those ships, both gate jumpers and those with their own drives, were shepherded clear of the fighting. The small number of combat units that we retained in Rosa and Hydra Stations attempted to cut off the enemy’s salient through the Junction Line, but the Nameless’s remaining combat strength held them off long enough for the salient to collapse in on itself.”
Wingate paused, his expression grim.
“The Nameless did something that in many respects was very impressive. They recognised as a result of their losses, they were in not position to hold the gains they made as a result of their breakthrough of the Junction Line and made no attempt to do so. Instead throwing good after bad, they ruthlessly cut their losses. They had built a network of over a hundred space gates leading to Earth and facing the Junction Line. Now our scout ships have confirmed that they have not just abandoned these gates, they’ve destroyed them.
“When it came to it, The Nameless did not hesitate to write off the fruits of over a year’s worth of fighting at a single stroke and fall back along their supply lines. By doing so, they have freed up ships that were committed to the defence of those gates and denied us targets. Our ships on the Junction Line report there has been some skirmishing, but nothing beyond a handful of ships committed at any one time. During these skirmishes, they’ve made our support ships their prime targets. They have traded space for time in which to rebuild their fleet and seek action only to impair our strategic mobility. This indicates exactly what we feared – the Nameless are not beaten. They intend to return and finish what they started.
The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) Page 23
