There were smiles and signs or relief.
"So, they’re in full retreat." Someone said with relief. "They’ve lost."
"That is an optimistic assumption," Lewis replied in a voice that was both flat and loud. It abruptly broke the mood,
"Admiral, your own report estimates that a least forty enemy ships were destroyed, with the most of those remaining damaged to at least some extent." Clifton replied sharply. "This represents a very substantial portion of their invasion fleet. How can this be anything other than a major defeat?"
"Yes Ma’am, they did take significant losses. Unfortunately, I believe they were willing to accept those losses, in exchange for pulling the Home Fleet out of position. By using the lead fleet as a decoy, they fooled us into leaving Earth undefended. But for the efforts of Dauntless, their main fleet would have been left unmolested to strike at Earth."
"But their plan has failed, why would they continue?" Asked the German Chancellor.
"In Nineteen Fourteen the German Schlieffen Plan failed to land a knockout blow against France, sir, yet the Great War continued for another four years." Lewis replied. "Set backs in warfare, even big ones, are a practical reality. The Aèllr in the Contact War, were always hamstrung by their unwillingness to accept casualties. The Nameless, regrettably, do not appear to be so constrained."
"I don’t believe we should rule out peace, Admiral!" The German replied sharply.
"Neither do I, Chancellor, and should the Nameless contact us with peace proposals, I will be the very first to cheer but unfortunately I do not believe this will happen. The information we have to hand, indicates the Nameless have already wiped out one race. We have seen for ourselves a willingness to suffer losses which will I admit, I find frightening. All of this speaks of the deepest possible commitment."
"Okay Admiral, answer me this;" Clifton asked sharply, "if this is just a temporary blip for the Nameless, why are they retreating?"
"The logistical brake." Wingate cut in.
"I don’t follow you."
"Before her own destruction, the Dauntless eliminated or crippled at least four enemy fuel tankers. Given that they were refuelling at the time they were hit, it is likely the Nameless were left without enough fuel to sustain their advance. It is our belief that they are now retreating down their own supply lines."
"How far are they going to retreat?"
Wingate glanced toward Lewis, who gave a half shrug.
"We guess, and we stress this is only a guess, that Landfall will be approximately as far as the retreat goes."
"What is the basis for that guess?"
"They have already eliminated our forces in that area. They likely had a muster point close to Landfall in preparation for their attack on Baden."
"We have hurt them badly though. That cruiser that fought them at Junction showed that there are limits to their wonderful jump technology." Clifton asked hopefully. "That is correct isn’t it?"
"Possibly Ma’am." Wingate replied.
"Possibly? How the hell can it be possibly?" She demanded angrily
Lewis sighed and sat back in his chair.
"Council members, the answer is possibly because to give a clear answer we have to make three big assumptions and thus far, our assumptions haven’t had a good track record. First, the assumption is that we have seen the bulk of their first line strength. The second, that we can return all surviving elements of the Third Fleet to service. The final assumption is that the Nameless aren’t going to pull any new technological tricks out of their hat. If these assumptions are correct, then we have perhaps evened the score. If not, when the fighting resumes, we will remain at a disadvantage."
Several members of the council looked annoyed at Lewis’s almost lecturing tone and Wingate shot his subordinate a look of warning.
Clifton fiddled with her papers for a moment, before angrily throwing them down.
"Where do we go from here?"
"We prepare for the long haul ma’am. It is my belief this war will be both long and brutal." Wingate replied.
"Will it be winnable?"
Everyone looked around at the question. The speaker was Prime Minister Michael Leyland.
"Can we win?" He repeated.
All eyes returned to the two officers.
"I will not lie to this council." Wingate said. "We don’t know the strength of their fleet, the strength of their economy, the will of their people. We don’t even know whether they even are people in any sense we’d recognise. Worst of all, we don’t even know why they have chosen to go to war against us. Finally, with the surviving elements of the Third Fleet still arriving, we don’t yet know how badly we’ve been hurt. We need to answer all of these questions before we can judge what the future holds. In essence council members, the past two weeks has been a beginning, nothing more. The weeks, months and possibly years ahead will establish whether we have a future."
About the Author
Edmond Barrett is the self-published author of, The Nameless War and the novella, The Job Offer. A resident of Dublin Ireland he is life long fan of science fiction and fantasy. The novel you have just read was developed from the short story ‘The Mississippi Incident’ in an attempt to discover the implications of this border clash.
Excerpt from Book Two of the Nameless War Trilogy:
The Landfall Campaign
Available from Autumn 2012
Our man in…
1st November 2066
Jeff Harlow let go of the camera in mid air and for a moment it stayed where he wanted it. Then there was a split second rumble from somewhere astern and the camera - in obedience to the laws of physics - started to drift sideways. Why was it things were never easy? Jeff though to himself, all he wanted to do was a small explanation piece and things had to be difficult. This certainly wasn’t what he had expected.
When the network manager told him they’d received permission from the fleet to embed a journalist on a starship he’d volunteered without a second thought. That had definitely been his first mistake. Suzie had not been happy - really seriously not happy - that he hadn’t talked to her first. But if you wanted to get anywhere in the news industry you had to get your face onto people screens. Time was against him though. He was already thirty three, and while the news broadcasts were one of the few bits of the entertainment industry where you could still command top dollar when old and grey, you needed to get your foot in the door before you got to that state. News-casts of the war, our man on the front, that was the sure fire way to get ahead.
Problem was as time went along, it started to look like less of a good idea. First there had been the gene therapy to reduce, although by no means eliminate, bone decalcification from time spent in microgravity. Then there was basic training. The signing of documents which effectively made him subject to fleet authority while on their ships. He’d been kind of nervous about that last one, he didn’t want to find himself drafted; he had the network lawyers look over it first. Then finally he was dispatched to a ship, and that was definitely the point at which Jeff decided he’d made one hell of a mistake.
He’d been expecting a battleship or at least a cruiser, something chunky. It certainly wasn’t going to be the flagship of the Home Fleet since Admiral Lewis had made no secret of his dislike for journalists, embedded or otherwise. But something like the Titan, or the Deimos. Instead he found himself directed to the K7. At first he’d thought it must be a brand new ship that hadn’t been named yet. He’d planned a number of recordings, a new warship, a new crew, their training, their hopes and fears for the future as they learned what their new ship was capable of. It would have been great, except for the slight wrinkle that K7 wasn’t a new ship. Indeed Jeff struggled to think of her as a ship at all.
She was a K Class courier, the type was only thirty eight metres long, with a eight metre diameter, no armour, no guns, not even a centrifuge, just a very light weight hull wrapped around a humongous engine. This was what they expected him to go into a
war zone in. She’d been reconfigured for deep reconnaissance. Which meant that basically a collar containing countermeasures equipment and the winch for the towed array, had been bolted onto the ship. It made an already ugly vessel look pregnant.
He’d immediately complained to the network. They were of course hugely supportive in that special, you-don’t-do-this-you’re-history-here, way. The only concession he won was that as soon as K7 got shot at with him on board, they’d pull him out. Assuming the courier survived that first shot long enough to get him home.
“Mister Harlow.”
Jeff jumped at the voice behind him. The magnets in the soles of his shoes lost their connection with the deck plating and his head collided with the deckhead. He turned awkwardly. Petty Officer Jacqueline Utzon was floating in the access way to the courier’s accommodation area, looking impatient.
“The skipper wants the camera confiscated, you in a suit and on the bridge.” She said holding out her hand.
“What? Again!” he complained as he handed over the camera. “How am I supposed to do anything if every time…” He trailed off. As soon as she had the camera, Utzon turned with a great deal more elegance than he could manage and headed back to the bridge, leaving him to complain at the receding soles of her boots. Jeff sighed and started to pull on his survival suit.
The bridge of the courier was a small module at the front of the ship. There was quite a large viewing port at the front that gave a spectacular view of the cosmos, with two blisters on either side that allowed a person to look back down the length of the ship. In contrast to vast emptiness beyond the re-enforced glass, the bridge itself was stuffed full of equipment and people. The bridge was already darkened when Jeff pulled himself through the hatch. The only source of light was the three sensor displays, with much of that blocked by the crew members hunched over them. Lieutenant Douglas Driscoll, or at least the shadowy blob in the centre of the bridge that Jeff knew to be the Lieutenant, nodded to him as he came in. PO Utzon pushed past him as she headed aft to engineering. Jeff made his way over using the handholds in the deckhead.
“Mister Harlow,” the Lieutenant said quietly, “we were getting leakage; it was interfering with the towed array.”
“It’s all right Douglas,” Jeff replied diplomatically. “I’m sure I can do the piece later.” The Lieutenant had made clear as soon as Jeff had stepped on board that he was there under sufferance. Still Driscoll was okay as 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 me, I’ll stuff you into a cargo 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 the Lieutenant’s screen. It was a small hologram display showing a multicoloured sphere, mostly shades of blue with one small patch that was bright red and another of orange. On his first trip out, Jeff had thought that these were ships and they were about to come under fire, to the amusement of a few members of the crew. It turned out to be the emissions of the local star and the closest planet. He’d endeavoured since then to keep his mouth shut if it might make a fool of him. Watching the crew at work he’d learned a few things. Smaller of the two coloured patches indicated a planet; 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.” Said one of the crewmen at the sensor displays. Jeff had been starting to doze and now woke with a bit of 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. That was promptly taken off him on grounds of ‘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 baring 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.
“We’re at the edge of our range, sir. 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 readable.
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 loosing the contacts.”
Jeff expected Driscoll to look worried but the Lieutenant 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 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 realized that in fact the officer 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 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 is 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.” Dr
iscoll replied, Jeff hadn’t realised he’d spoken.
Two weeks out from Earth we have perhaps finally found our quarry. Jeff found himself shifting into new cast mode. We are currently orbiting the planet… he’d have to ask that 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 still need a 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 now without apparent detection. Now comes the careful approach, to gather whatever information is available. That wasn’t quite as good and two hours was too long to keep the viewer interested, he’d have to brush over that in the recording.
The Nameless War Page 39
