Deimos’s two Ravens drifted along, with barely a glow from their engines while between them invisible communications lasers beamed back and forth.
“I’m just saying it’ll be dry and stringy by the time we land,” moaned Schurenhofer as she hunched over her controls.
“Only if we’re lucky,” replied Rackow, weapons controller on board C for Curious. “Last night what I got was ninety percent fat and gristle.”
“I thought it was alright,” said Flying Officer Malm, pilot of Deimos’s new fighter.
“Well yeah, officer country,” Schurenhofer muttered. “One rule for the brass and another for the plebs. As for the potatoes, they are not something I want to talk about.”
“Then please stop!” Alanna snapped across the link before anyone else could reply. “Everyone stop yapping about the bloody food and start watching their instruments.”
“Just get us off second watch, skipper,” Schurenhofer said glancing up, “so we can have a decent dinner for once.” When Alanna glared at her she hunched back over her display. On Alanna’s own screen she could see the transports still radiating off heat, but all the warships had gone to silent running and dropped below the detection threshold of Dubious’s passive sensors. She’d never said, not to the head doctors, to any other officer or even Schurenhofer, but she hated when she couldn’t see her base ship. It brought back too many memories of sitting in the wreck of C for Caesar, surrounded by the wreckage of the Dauntless, waiting for the air to run out. The warships were currently networking their navigation computers, crunching the numbers in preparation for the jump directly to Landfall.
“Dubious, Curious, this is Deimos control.” Alanna’s eyes flicked to the communication panel. The transmission was a laser connection.
“Deimos, this is Dubious, we’re receiving you.”
“We have a contact on passives bearing one, seven, eight dash, zero, one, seven, range two and a half light hours,”
Then the Commodore’s voice cut across the link.
“Dubious, Curious, we have just received permission from the flagship to send you to investigate. Power up your drives and standby for jump settings.
“Understood Deimos,” Alanna replied already flicking switches. Below the cockpit a whine started to build as the drive spun up. Dubious’s computer was transmitting gravitational readings back to the cruiser. Dubious could make her own calculations but the cruiser could throw a lot more processing power at the problem. Her fingers danced across the keyboard as she programmed and executed a smooth turn away from the convoy, producing a brief burst of engine power that pressed her back into her seat. Whatever else was said about them, one thing fighters did better than their large brethren was changing course.
“Skipper, drive board is showing all green. We are five minutes from jump capable. Weapons board is green. We are now weapons hot,” Schurenhofer reported as she worked.
“Understood,” Alanna replied. On her radar she could see Curious angling in closer. “Curious, form up on my port wing and prepare to jump.”
“Roger that, Dubious,” Malm said. He sounded excited across the link and promptly confirmed her guess by adding: “Tally Ho.”
“Malm, keep sharp and for the love of God do not get stupid!” she snapped back. The communications net between them went silent. The whine from the jump drive had now risen to something that was felt rather than heard. On her control panel the drive ready light came on and beside it the navigation console gave a beep to indicate that the upload was complete. Another couple of minutes ticked by but nothing came through from Deimos.
“Skipper…” Schurenhofer started to say.
“Yes, I know,” Alanna muttered.
The drives weren’t designed to sit with a charge built.
“Dubious,” came the Commodore’s voice across the link, “you are to make jump and investigate. Your first priority is reconnaissance. You are authorised to engage targets of opportunity but you are to withdraw if confronted by significant opposition. Target profile has changed - energy output has increased and course has changed. We believe it is on approach. Be advised that no friendlies are believed to be in system.”
The last damn system, Alanna thought. I really thought we were going to get through clean. If only the system had been a little further from Landfall, but if wishes were fishes…
“Deimos, instructions understood. We’re jumping. Curious, jump on my command. Three, two, one, Mark.”
In front of Dubious, the jump out portal began to form and open as the fighter’s drive engaged.
Eighteen point nine seconds after jumping, Dubious dropped back into real space.
“Full sweep!” Alanna barked as she switched the controls back to manual and twitched the fighter to starboard.
“Contact!” shouted Schurenhofer, “Bearing zero, zero, one dash, zero, zero, two, range nine hundred K!”
Too close, too straight, thought Alanna as she threw Dubious into a violent corkscrew.
“Leader,” came Malm’s highly excited voice. “It’s an enemy escort. I’m engaging!” As he spoke Curious’s engines went full burn and the fighter shot past Dubious.
“Curious! NO!” Alanna shouted, and then swore savagely as she rammed the throttle forward. “Set guns for auto defensive fire, forward arc!” she ordered as they chased after Curious. On her radar screen she could see the blue blip for Curious, the red for the Nameless ship and then four new contacts that suddenly appeared, small and closing fast on Curious. Malm saw the danger, he must have done, but always with humans there was that horrible reaction lag. Dubious’s computer didn’t have that lag and both the dorsal and ventral turrets rattled into action. Two Nameless missiles burst as streams of plasma bolts struck them. Curious twisted violently, her ventral gun belatedly starting to fire. Another Nameless missile was riddled, but the fourth exploded and sent a spray of shrapnel toward Curious. On Alanna’s HUD a damaged icon appeared beside Curious but the fighter’s engines were still firing.
Alanna swung Dubious back towards the Nameless. The threat detection system let out a whine as the Nameless locked onto them.
“No countermeasures.” she snapped at Schurenhofer before the weapons controller could react.
The Nameless was turning away from them, which also brought its two broadside launchers to bear. Another pair of dual-purpose missiles erupted. A bit big for anti-fighter work and too small to be good in the anti-ship role, no real threat to a pilot that knew their job unless in large numbers. Against fighters their biggest use was as counters to Dubious’s anti-ship missiles. Dubious spat a stream of plasma bolts from the turret guns taking out the missiles bearing down on them. With their missiles fired, the Nameless had nothing left to stop the two anti-ship missiles nestled within Dubious’s bomb bay. The ship started to translucent as it began the jump out process.
“Lock missiles.” Alanna barked out
“We have l….” Schurenhofer called out. “We’ve lost it!” as Dubious shot past the ship.
Alanna swore savagely as she tried to drag the nose round. As she got them pointed the right way the Nameless ship was fading from the radar display. The targeting computer trilled as it locked on. Alanna rested her thumb on the firing button. Then lifted it away. The burst of acceleration meant they were still moving away from the Nameless ship, so their missiles would have to come to a relative halt before they could start to close. By the time they reached the target, it would be gone. On the radar display, the ship disappeared.
Ten minutes after Dubious and Curious landed back on Deimos the convoy jumped away. The next stop would be Landfall. The hangar had barely finished repressurising before Alanna was up and out. In the second hangar the deck crew was already examining the damage to the port wing, while Malm and Rackow pulled themselves out of the cockpit.
“Everyone out. Now!” she snarled. She had no authority over the deck crew and the personnel hesitated, glancing at their deck chief. “I am not fucking asking you!” she added m
enacingly. The deck chief pushed off towards the hatch, his people followed and Rackow darted after them, leaving Alanna alone with Malm.
Alanna pushed herself down until she felt her boot magnets engage.
“Look, I…” he started to say.
“I didn’t ask you to speak,” Alanna cut him off as she examined the damage. High velocity impacts created distinctive damage patterns. The hits didn’t appear to have intersected with anything vital.
“What’s the standard Nameless response to a short range jump in?” she asked.
“At ranges zero to five thousand kilometres the Nameless fire at the jump in portal as it forms. Missiles are programmed to accelerate to a velocity that will allow them to get within five hundred kilometres of the portal before it fully forms, they then shut down engines. When fighters emerge, missiles go to seeker mode and reactivate their engines,” replied Malm.
“And the standard response for the fighters?”
“Evasive manoeuvres immediately after re-entering real space to get out of the missiles’ targeting cones before their engines come back online.”
“What should the fighters not do?” Alanna asked with studied calm.
“Go straight in.”
“What did you do?”
Malm swallowed hard and closed his eyes.
“Go straight in.”
“If I hadn’t done what I did, you’d be dead. And you know what? That was a mistake by me because if I hadn’t I might have been able to nail that ship before it jumped away.” Alanna stared at him, “but it did get away and there goes our element of surprise. I want you to think about that when all hell breaks loose over Landfall. Now get out.”
She heard a murmur of words at the hatch as Malm left.
“Quite a dressing down, Lieutenant,” said a voice unexpectedly. Alanna spun round as Crowe drifted around Curious’s wing.
“Sir, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were here.”
“Yeah, I got that,” Crowe replied as he landed in front of her. “But then when one of my fighters comes back missing bits and my deck chief is complaining that he’s been chased out of his own hangar, where would I be?”
“Yes sir.”
“But as I said that was quite a dressing down you gave him.”
“Yes sir. As senior pilot I felt it necessary. He made a clumsy mistake and was lucky to get away with it. We dropped in too close to it. It saw our portal start to form and started spinning up its drive.”
“Yes.” Crowe ran his finger along one of the punctures through the wing. “We both know that luck is something we all need but can never depend on. You jumped based on our calculations. The damage was done before you dropped back into real space. We detected an FTL transmission from the escort. It was cut short when you attacked and forced it to jump, but…”
“But they know we’re coming.”
“Yes. We’ve lost the element of surprise.”
___________________
19th August 2067, 06:30 Douglas Time
Two light seconds beyond the Landfall Red Line space rippled and then opened slowly to form a jump portal from which the ships of Kite String filed back into real space. Fighters rolled away from their base ships and headed for their assigned stations. In the surrounding space, the convoy’s arrival was noted.
When a fleet courier gave them notice that a convoy would be arriving in a matter of days, Eulenburg had ordered a bed be set up for him in a small office of Four C’s. He was asleep when the watchkeepers reported the arrival of a large number of ships. He was up and out before any of the duty watch managed to buzz him. Captain Gillum appeared almost immediately at his elbow, trying to smooth down his sleep tousled hair before giving up and ramming his cap down on it. “The convoy?” he asked.
“I hope so Captain.” Between the jammers and physical destruction of Landfall’s detection grid, all the system could say was that something had definitely just arrived. The sensor operators were working hard to coax more out of the tattered remnants of the grid and Eulenburg had to force himself not to start issuing orders when everyone was already doing everything they could.
“Has Governor Reynolds been informed?” he asked the day officer as he stared up at the holo display.
“No sir,” the man replied. “I thought you might want to wait - just in case this is another false alarm.”
Eulenburg shook his head.
“No. If she wants a position of authority here, then she’s going to have to deal with it like the rest of us. Is it still raining upstairs?”
“Torrential sir.”
“The fighters?”
“We currently have four Ravens, five Pegasus and the last Typhoon operational,” Gillum replied.
“Prep them all.”
As Gillum hurried away Governor Reynolds arrived in Four C, wrapped in a dressing gown, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Eulenburg acknowledged her with a nod.
“Is it Kite String Admiral?” she asked.
“That’s what we’re waiting to find out.”
“Admiral sir, report from sensors,” called out a lieutenant. “The new contacts are about two light seconds beyond the Red Line. It’s a tight formation of about fifty ships. Contacts are on an orbital insertion track, moving at low acceleration.”
“It’s the convoy,” Eulenburg breathed. “They’re finally here.”
“Sir, all the enemy ships within detection range are breaking orbit. The ones around Breaker’s Rock and the moon are definitely powering up their engines.”
“I’ll contact my people, Admiral. We’ll get the work parties gathered,” said Reynolds before turning to leave.
“Thank you Governor. Captain Gillum, alert all commands. Let them know that Kite String is inbound.”
___________________
07:20 Douglas Time
With the bridge depressurised it was completely silent. Crowe could hear only the hiss of the intercom carrier wave. There were more Nameless visible in the system than they’d hoped, but less than they’d feared. The Nameless non-combatants and a couple of bombards were scuttling away into the darkness of interplanetary space. Under different circumstances the Battle Fleet ships would have been able to chase them down with ease. But as the convoy continued to push in toward Landfall the Nameless warships were deploying to meet them. The opening shots were perhaps only minutes away but right now things were looking pretty good. The Nameless taskforce was largely made up of escorts, a few cruisers and so far one capital ship. On his display Crowe could see the convoy formation. This time round it was tight, with everyone where they were supposed to be.
“Sensors, give me a tactical overlay on main display,” Crowe murmured.
“Yes sir.”
On the main holo three circles appeared around the red dot signifying the ship, showing the effective ranges of Deimos’s plasma cannons, flak guns and point defence. It then did the same for the rest of the escorts. A ring of steel, ready and waiting.
“Bridge, sensors! Contact separation, we have incoming.”
On the display new contacts appeared and immediately started to accelerate towards them, a handful of capital ship missiles led by a wave of their smaller general purpose brethren.
“Enemy missiles will enter flak gun range in three minutes.”
“Understood,” Crowe replied. “Bridge to fire control. Commence engagement with flak guns when missiles close to within twenty-five thousand kilometres. You may engage with plasma cannons as they enter range.”
“Fire control to bridge. Understood.”
All the while the missiles continued to close on them. That was the hardest part, the long drawn out wait, watching the display as they closed.
On board D for Dubious, Schurenhofer’s fingers rattled across the control panel as she generated firing solutions and cross-checked against the intended targets of the other fighters. From astern of the cockpit came a mechanical whine as the dorsal and ventral gun turrets deployed from their barbettes. Alanna guid
ed Dubious into position on the upper left of the fighter screen, twelve thousand kilometres ahead of the convoy.
“Here they come Skipper,” Schurenhofer said. “We have tone and lock.”
“Firing,” Alanna said. As she spoke Dubious shuddered as the first of their Starfox missiles left the pylon. Seconds later there was a visible ripple of explosions as the approaching cap ship missiles were blown apart. The small ones continued in and the guns rattled into life as Schurenhofer tried to pick off as many of them as they could before they passed through Dubious’s range. Short bursts stabbed out left and right, each terminating in an explosion.
The fighter’s threat detection system gave an abrupt whoop as one of the missiles suddenly turned on them. Schurenhofer’s exclamation choked off as Alanna violently jerked the controls, sending the fighter rolling way from the threat and bringing the fixed gun in the nose to bear. The first burst of fire riddled it and without pause she reversed the roll putting Dubious back on station.
“Dubious to all planes. Be advised that some of the GP missiles are being programmed for anti-fighter,” she called out as Schurenhofer steadied herself.
“Dubious, this is Curious,” Malm’s voice came across the link. “We’re missing a fighter. I can’t see H for Humphrey!”
Alanna glanced away from her own display. There was a gap near the centre of the fighter screen right where H for Humphrey’s transponder should have been, showing only weak radar returns, just the right size for wreckage. But there was the faint transmission of an emergency beacon.
“They’re search and rescue’s problem now. Focus on the job,” she snapped at him as the fighter screen redeployed to fill the hole.
The Landfall Campaign (The Nameless War) Page 36
