“Alright, although we should be making a ten minute burn in about… five minutes. It will be easier once you have some Gs.”
“Thanks Chief.”
Nodding, Guinness continued his rounds.
___________________________
The Dryad star was much older than Earth’s sun and was now nearing the end of its life. It had already gone through one expansion phase that scientists believed had probably consumed one of its innermost planets. It had also moved the Goldilocks zone, the band in which a planet would be the right temperature for liquid water, just far enough out to encompass the second planet in the system. This wouldn’t have been of any great interest except for two other factors. The first was that the initial survey ship found life on Dryad Two. Granted this was nothing more complicated than blue slime but it had been an unexpected find on a planet that had only been warm enough to have liquid water, in evolutionary terms, for a mere blink of an eye. The second was that once people started looking at the planet something even more interesting turned up: zillithium deposits. The mineral was important for among other things starship jump drives and to date otherwise unknown in human space. There were less effective alternatives to zillithium, such as the gold and uranium mix used by ships of Hood’s generation, but the mineral was about the only raw material that was worth the expense of interstellar shipping. The mining industry was at the heart of the local economy, but there were other subordinate operations elsewhere in the system.
An hour after first arriving in the solar system the squadron re-entered real space a safe distance from Dryad Two. Willis was pleased to see the four ships formed up into a neat diamond formation. For all their flaws they at least looked like real warships.
“Sensors, are we seeing any of the guard ships?” she asked. At this range there wasn’t much hope of the radar picking up anything as small as a starship, especially with the mass of a planet behind it to provide ground returns. The passives on the other hand stood a reasonably good chance, since they knew roughly where the guard ship should be.
“I’m registering a Myth Class cruiser in orbit close to the main base,” the duty officer at sensors reported eventually. “They’ve just lit up their engines Ma’am. Going on profile it looks to be the Hermes, but I’m not seeing any sign of any other warships, Ma’am.”
“Wasn’t there supposed to be still three cruisers out there?” Commander Horan quietly asked.
“Weeks ago there was. We should be seeing three cruisers and three destroyers. But we might have missed something while we were in transit. We were supposed to be here a week ago, Alex,” Willis replied.
“They surely can’t have left just one ship though. It would be an open invitation to Rizr to start something.”
“Yes.” Willis chewed on her lower lip for a moment before shrugging. “They must be somewhere.”
“Captain, we’ve just been challenged by the Hermes. We’ve been ordered to identify ourselves,” came the announcement from Communications.
That was a pretty quick response, Willis thought to herself. They were still about seven light seconds away from the planet but the challenge had been issued in a little under a minute. Not bad when you considered the transmission lag that the distance introduced.
“Well they aren’t asleep. They mustn’t have our engine profiles on record though,” Horan remarked.
“No reason for them to. Coms, send our ID and inform them that we are their relief and request approach vector to dock with the base.” She waited patiently as their reply was transmitted. There was a long pause, longer than the distance alone would introduce. In all probability with their unfamiliar engine profiles, their authorisation codes were being checked and double-checked. Finally however they were given clearance to approach the planet.
“Commander, you have the bridge,” Willis said to Horan as she got to her feet. “I want to have a word with the Admiral before we dock. I don’t like the fact we’re only seeing one ship.”
“The other two and the destroyers might be out in the system somewhere,” Horan suggested.
“Maybe,” Willis replied unconvinced. “But it seems an odd time to be showing the flag to the outer settlements.”
“Just the Hermes?” Shibanova asked as he looked up from the cabin’s computer console. “Please Commander, sit down, you are making the place look untidy.”
The Admiral waited for her to seat herself on the chair.
“They could have just been summoned back to Earth. We are unfortunately a week late, sir,” Willis said.
“They were left behind by the Second Fleet because the Hades was having mechanical problems and the destroyers were the oldest with the Second Fleet. I find it unlikely that if they weren’t brought when Earth was in direct danger, that they would be sent back before we could arrive.” The Admiral paused and scratched the back of his head. “Once we dock, I will of course be going onto the base to pay my respects to the base admiral. I want you to contact the Captain of the Hermes and pay a visit. We need to know what has been happening here.”
“They will be able to provide a tactical download as they hand over to us, sir. Although getting it into a file format our computer can handle might be tricky.”
“That kind of thing is not your concern Commander, not any more. Let your subordinates do their jobs and you do yours.” He turned away from the computer screen and towards her. “I do not say this as criticism Commander, for I know that you were very much thrown in at the deep end. I say this more as an observation. You have not yet made the switch from subordinate to captain. As second-in-command your duties were primarily internal to the ship. Now, the opposite is true, and you need to be concentrating on the universe beyond the hull plating. There are things Commander, which do not show up in official reports. We need to be aware of those things.”
Willis had stiffened automatically at the Admiral’s mildly worded criticism, but then forced herself to relax. “Yes sir,” she replied evenly, “I’ll get right on it.”
Hood’s primary combat bridge was in the conning tower above the main hull. It was a design feature that fell out of favour shortly after the Contact War. Still, with the bridge visor open the view was certainly impressive and for Willis at least, soothing. Some things had definitely been easier as a junior officer than they were now, Willis thought to herself as she stood there in her dress uniform. Getting on board another starship for one thing. Metaphorically speaking, junior officers could just turn up at the door, but an officer commanding another ship was subject to an unwritten rule that they waited for an invitation to be issued. Although those rules didn’t forbid a certain amount of prodding and the invitation had now been graciously issued, she was just waiting for the larger cruiser to dock over on the far side of the base. It wouldn’t be long now. She could already see the ship with her naked eye. But until it did Willis was willing to enjoy these few minutes of peaceful reflection.
Her first response, hell probably her second as well, to the Admiral’s mildly worded criticism was irritation. But this time she had forced herself to take a deep breath and step back. Shibanova was good at following his own advice. He issued orders and then left people to get on with it. In contrast it was her big failing. She didn’t find it easy to delegate and by micromanaging, rubbed people up the wrong way. Just prior to the start of the war her own career had been about to hit a road bump, precisely because of those tendencies. Yet perversely they had saved her life, not a thought Willis was entirely comfortable with. So she instead focused on the base’s sprawling structure while she waited for Hermes to dock.
Hawkings Base was itself kind of interesting to look at. A mishmash of centrifuges, docking ports, repair bays and storage containers, there was no rhyme or reason to its layout. Unlike Baden or the various platforms orbiting Earth, it wasn’t a purpose-built installation and was in fact a hotchpotch of different bits and pieces designed and built at different times, connected only for the sake of convenience. Already there were c
hunks of the station deemed obsolete and effectively abandoned. While nominally a fleet run installation, Hawkings existed mostly to handle the commercial shipping to and from the planet’s mining operations, although currently there wasn’t much in the way of civilian transport visible. A beep from her intercom broke her reverie.
“Skipper, the Hermes has completed docking manoeuvres.”
“Thank you Bridge, please inform Commander Horan I will be leaving the ship shortly.”
Being piped aboard a ship as a visiting captain was certainly a novelty, Willis thought to herself, as was the status of honoured guest. But here she was in the wardroom of Hermes, taking questions but not being offered many chances get in ones of her own. The past few weeks had obviously not been particularly comfortable for the officers and crew, here on the sidelines and all too aware that critical battles were being fought close to home. Even as someone with a tendency to overlook subtle signs in others, Willis couldn’t the miss the mixture of apprehension and excitement exuded by Hermes’s officers. She tried her best to explain what it had been really like but she suspected combat would be just as much of a shock to them as it had been to her. Eventually Hermes’s commander, Captain Gerry Erdely, rescued her.
“Sorry about all that Commander,” Erdely said in a jovial tone as he closed the cabin hatch behind them. “I’m afraid we’ve all been on tenterhooks since the fleet left, and Headquarters haven’t exactly killed themselves to keep us in the loop. If I hadn’t let them get a look at you I think I would have had a mutiny on my hands. Please, sit.” The captain’s cabin on board Hermes wasn’t much bigger than Willis’s but it was totally different. Pictures, both static prints and electronic frames cycling through a series of images, decorated all the bulkheads. The pictures were a mixed bunch, some clearly of family, others of a younger Erdely and the ships Willis assumed he must have served on. Underfoot a worn strip of carpet covered the deck plating and completed the look. Her cabin on Hood was simply the place where she slept. Erdely’s was his home.
“Yes sir, it’s been a busy few weeks,” she replied. “Fire-fighting doesn’t leave much time to do anything else. Particularly when people seem to be on top of things as you clearly are.”
“Of course, of course,” Erdely replied as he sat back with a sigh. “Problem is, things out here aren’t as simple as they might seem from a desk on Earth. I’m sure you’ve done summer manoeuvres out here.”
“I think the last time was three years ago. I was the gunnery officer on the Apollo.”
“Well, then you know the drill. We do manoeuvres and one or two Rizr scout cruisers sneak in at the edge of the system to watch. We know they’re there and they know we know. Headquarters always figured the benefit to us of a show of strength, outweighed the benefit to them in terms of intelligence. Well this year there were two scouts, they saw the fleet start manoeuvres then abruptly haul ass out of here.”
“Did the scouts report it in?” Willis asked.
“Not straight away. They hung around for over a week.” Erdely shrugged his shoulders. “They probably thought we were up to something new and it only gradually dawned on them the reason they weren’t seeing the fleet, was that it wasn’t here to be seen.”
“You didn’t run them off, sir?” Willis asked, her tone carefully neutral.
“No we didn’t,” he said, shaking his head. “Sending them packing would have just confirmed they’d seen something serious and got them home sooner. We were content to let them burn time, although if there had been only one of them, I would have been tempted to try and take it out.”
Humanity and the Tample Star nation of Rizr had clashed over the ownership of Dryad within months of the planet’s original discovery back in the early forties. Dryad might not be the most hospitable place in the universe but for Rizr, whose population lived entirely in domed habitats, it was quite a prize. This was less than ten years after the end of the Contact War, a time when Battle Fleet consisted of only a handful of ships. Rizr’s government delivered an ultimatum threatening war if humanity didn’t evacuate the planet. Willis was just old enough to remember the fear that Earth was about to start its second interstellar war. For weeks it was all anyone talked about. Then the news arrived from Dryad. The Rizr had attacked and it turned into a bloody disaster for them. There was jubilation tinged with anxiety as Earth wondered what would come next. Then slowly it dawned that there was no next. Most of the Rizr fleet was short ranged and they had lost virtually all of those ships that could reach Dryad. The war simply spluttered out and their window of opportunity closed. In the years that followed humanity out-built them in both quantity and quality.
But since no ceasefire was ever signed, technically a state of war still existed between Earth and the Rizr star nation.
“Anyhow, if they haven’t found out about the war through diplomatic sources yet, they soon will. Whatever else you say about their ruling junta, they aren’t stupid. They’re going to realise they have a brief chance, the first they’ve had in twenty odd years.”
Willis bit her lip for a moment before replying.
“It’s not likely to be brief, sir,” she replied.
“I hardly think that Headquarters is going to leave Dryad under the sole protection of your ships, Commander.” There was something patronising in the Captain’s tone, inadvertent perhaps, it still rankled Willis, but she moderated her reply.
“Respectfully sir, I don’t think you appreciate just how bad it was,” she replied carefully. “Baden was completely destroyed, we lost half the Third Fleet and the other half was badly chewed up. Hood was with the Home Fleet at Alpha Centauri. We only stopped them by a hair’s breadth.” Erdely paused, cup of coffee halfway to his lips. “We’re it, because they don’t have anyone else to spare.”
Erdely put his cup down very gently.
“I see,” he said quietly. “We didn’t… we didn’t imagine it could be that bad.”
“I’m afraid it was, sir. Right now the fleet is trying to put itself back together but we don’t know how long before the Nameless start their next campaign.”
Erdely stared down into his cup.
“Sir,” Willis asked, “where are Hades, Athena and the destroyers?”
“Hmm?” Erdely looked up, distracted.
“The destroyers, the rest of your squadron, where are they?”
“Dotted about the solar system,” Erdely replied after moment. “Hades is docked at the main hydrogen refinery above Dryad Five. Athena is at Dryad Four’s water plants. The destroyers are patrolling the outer edge of the system.”
That didn’t sound like a great deployment. The three cruisers were isolated. True even a single Myth class cruiser was a formidable opponent for anything the Rizr possessed, but even so…
“Yes, I know, it’s not good. But when the entire system watched the Second Fleet head off like a bat out of hell, there’s no doubt people were a bit alarmed. Admiral Kinnear, commander of Hawkings, was left in charge. He wanted to reassure everyone and there’s no doubt a heavy cruiser is a reassuring sight. It would be a ballsy move for the Rizr to try to cut one of us out. Still you gave us a bit of a start when you jumped in and the computer didn’t recognise your engine emissions.”
Kinnear’s name wasn’t one Willis was familiar with, which was unusual as the fleet didn’t run to that many admirals. Willis would have said she had at least heard of all of them.
“He’s been out here for well over ten years,” Erdely continued, “married to a manager working for one of the mining consortiums. He’s a good administrator.”
Even with her usual weaknesses for picking up on those kinds of subtleties, that sounded to Willis suspiciously like being damned with faint praise. But then for Erdely to say more would be skating on thin ice. Willis was a more junior officer than him, and if there was one thing you didn’t do in the military it was criticise a senior to a junior.
“The orders we brought with us give command authority over all mobile units here
to Admiral Shibanova,” Willis said.
“Ah, I see,” Erdely replied in a carefully non-committal voice. “I’m sure Headquarters knows best.”
They talked for another half hour or so, but the important topics had already been covered. Then the orders for the Hermes that they had carried from Earth were formally received and Willis took that as her cue to leave. At the airlock onto the station she paused and offered Erdely her hand.
“We’ll be sure to look after things out here, sir,” she said.
“And we’ll look after things back home,” he replied as he shook her hand. “Good luck to you all.”
Six hours later Willis was back on Hood’s combat bridge staring out at the stars. Myth Class cruisers like Hermes were the fleet’s workhorse and after being aboard her, Hood’s numerous shortcomings seemed all the more obvious.
Behind her the entry hatch opened and Shibanova pulled himself in. Using the hand bars set in the deckhead he drifted over and deposited himself beside her.
“I thought you’d turned in, sir,” she said politely.
“I’m here for the same reason you are Commander, although I must admit I am tired. I didn’t expect my meeting with Admiral Kinnear to be so long or as wearying. Still we covered the important matters. Between him and Captain Erdely there was no particularly good news, but nothing I did not anticipate.”
“If I might make a suggestion, sir, I wouldn’t give up mithering Headquarters for more ships.”
“That is a piece of advice I have every intention of taking Commander,” Shibanova replied.
Out among the stars there was a sudden rippling flash of light. Then it was gone. It was what they were both on the bridge to see, the Hermes and her squadron jumping out and leaving them behind.
“Cruiser Squadron Eighteen now takes formal responsibility for the defence of the Dryad System,” Shibanova said quietly as he turned back towards the hatch. “Good night Commander.”
The Landfall Campaign (The Nameless War) Page 9
