The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) (32 page)

Lewis nodded.

“We acknowledge that Madam President,” Wingate replied, “and our time resources are not being wasted. The fleet has gone a long way towards restoring its strength. When we next commit to action, it will be with a stronger and better prepared fleet than anything the Nameless have ever faced before.”

___________________________

A cynic would say that most military officers are promoted at least one step beyond their competence. Commodore Tsukioka was not such an officer. When he’d been assigned to head the fleet’s intelligence and analysis section, he’d known this was the role his entire career, perhaps even life, had been preparing him for. He’d done his time in line postings but let others command ships and fleets, let them win success and glory in action. He would play his part here in the role nature had equipped him for.

That was generally his view but here and now, if some kind spirit had made him an offer to transport him through time and space to the Nameless space station in return for ten years of his life, he would gladly have taken it. Captain Willis had done well, very well in fact, hoovering up everything she could, but so much remained un-gathered.

The footage from the helmet cameras of every marine involved in the assault had been analysed virtually frame-by-frame. In every shot there were computer panels, storage lockers and bits of equipment that had gone un-investigated. How he yearned to know what they were. But the very last image of the station was the one of it coming apart as plasma bolts tore through it.

“I suppose the big question is how much the Nameless know or think we got,” said Tsukioka’s deputy, Lieutenant Commander Zindzi.

“If we have been very fortunate the station’s last signal will only have warned they were under attack,” Tsukioka replied absently. “However, Admiral Nisman is probably correct when he reported the task force’s approach made its intent fairly obvious well before they could silence the station. Not that I believe there was any way we could have avoided that. So it seems more reasonable to believe that the Nameless will consider all information on the station potentially compromised.”

“The history is interesting. You can sort of see where they’ve come from since then. Their First Contact nearly ended in extermination, so why ever take that chance again? I just wonder when they made their offer to allow us to quietly die out? Was it before or after the siege?”

“Hmm. The Junction survivors lost all concept of time while in captivity. Most of them thought they’d been prisoners for no more than six months,” the Commodore murmured before lapsing into silence and beginning to drum his fingers against his collarbone. Zindzi knew how to read that unconscious action.
Go away, I’m thinking
, it said.

The starmap had indeed been the most vital piece of intelligence they had found. There had been no way to download the information electronically, so instead Captain Willis had used a number of cameras plus several of the marine’s recorders to save it in image form. She’d then managed to identify several parts of human space, which had enabled them to marry it to human starmaps. Good work that – he’d have to see if she could be poached for the intelligence section. At the top of the map, clustered like fruit, were the Nameless, tantalisingly close but out of reach. If there was an answer, then Tsukioka felt it had to be there.

He was still standing on the same spot an hour later when Zindzi once more approached him.

“Sir, a courier has just arrived from the front with an intelligence download.
Spectre
reached the front two days ago.”

After destroying the enemy station, Nisman’s force had retreated back toward Earth with its precious intelligence cargo. But he’d also detached the
Spectre
to confirm several points on the Nameless map beyond the station.

“Anything of relevance?”

“Yes, sir,” Zindzi replied, offering a computer pad. “We’re incorporating it into the map now, but this is the raw data. Captain Willis discovered it. She doesn’t believe she was spotted.”

The image quality wasn’t especially good. Clearly it had been taken from vast distance using optical sensors. But what could be made out was a gate station, an unusual one. Those they’d seen before had been one or two space gates tethered to a space station, usually at Nameless supply dumps. But this one was on a different scale, six gates formed into a wide circular formation with the station at the centre. At the moment the image was taken, four of the gates had been operational and ships could be seen both entering and exiting.

“Captain Willis reports they also picked up an FTL transmission from the station. It was low powered but steady and she believes it was being used as a homing beacon,” Zindzi continued.

“What is its position?” Tsukioka asked.

“Coming up on the map now, sir.”

On the screen the icon changed and shifted position slightly, moving further away from the Nameless worlds.

“Captain Willis got a better fix on relative position than we’ve previously achieved through distant observation,” Zindzi explained.

Willis and
Spectre
had been further from the world of their mutual birth than humanity ever had before – a fact that would normally have been worthy of comment but not now. Tsukioka stared at the map and frowned, deep in thought.

“Please overlay a complete starmap with positions of all known stars within scope of the map,” he called over his shoulder.

That set off a burst of activity behind him. There were so many solar systems in the galaxy, most were neither in useful positions or contained anything of interest or value, so were mostly stripped out of maps for the sake of clarity. But now all those blips appeared on the map. Except near the top where Willis had found the station. There few stars were visible and those that were, were widely space.

“Where one galactic arm becomes another,” Tsukioka said quietly.

The system that station was based in was remarkably isolated, a single star forming a spur out towards the Nameless worlds.

“Without that system, can they reach our region of space?”

Zindzi had seen it as well. She was already hurrying away, shouting at her subordinates to pull out all available starmaps of the edges of the galactic arms.

Chapter Fourteen

The Forgotten Army

23rd July 2068
 

There was silence within the small hollow as they waited for the Lieutenant to return. As she waited, Alice fiddled nervously with the computer pad. Somewhere out there was a roadway, leading from some kind of Nameless processing centre in the west to croplands they had established in the east. As soon as they had discovered that the Nameless were growing food crops, they’d become an objective. As the head of the small mortar detachment, the faded corporal’s chevrons on her sleeve meant something again. When the Colonel persuaded them to join his small command, she had been expecting to return to her former role as a medic and stretcher-bearer. He’d smiled and described her as overqualified for that.

He was a clever man, the Colonel. Grudgingly, she had to give him that. He had ways of getting people to do what he wanted them to do, yet left them feeling he had done them some kind of favour. In the weeks since they’d first made contact with the marines, more groups of survivors had been discovered. Some wanted nothing to do with the marines and were bypassed, but they were in the minority. Most were desperately glad to regain contact, even if only tenuously, with the rest of the human race.

“Movement!” hissed one of the marines.

“We’re coming in,” someone else called out quietly from beyond view. Lieutenant Byatt crawled down and in, binoculars dangling from his neck, rifle strapped across his back. He was wearing his helmet and chest plate but the rest of his reactive armour was back at base. The power cells the armour required were too difficult to keep charged for regular use. 

“Okay, forward party has signalled target is on the move, so we’re on,” he said. “We hit them as they slow to take the bend.” Then turning to Alice, he added: “Mortar section – put down four rounds rapid high explosive along the disengaged side of the road, then move to second position and be ready to drop smoke. Clear?”

“Got it,” she replied.

There was a definite nervousness among the pros about having their heavy support manned by what were, at best, enthusiastic amateurs. But there were only so many marines to go round and they lacked the means to really train the amateurs.

“Alright, get moving.”

Alice nodded and motioned her seven-man detachment to follow. They quickly made their way through the woods to an area that would barely justify the use of the word clearing. Still, there was an opening through the branches, which they’d widened a few hours earlier to give the mortar a clear view of the sky.

Even after all of this time around the military, it had come as a surprise to
Alice to learn how simple a piece of equipment even a modern mortar was. Little more than a tube with a nail at the bottom, all the clever bits were in the support stand. Once hooked up to her computer pad, she could set the mortar to run through a pre-programmed firing pattern, within which it would make the necessary adjustments. Not quite idiot proof, but certainly close. Landfall’s GPS satellites had long since been blown from the skies but the pad had an inertial tracking system. All they had to do was to periodically re-zero it and it would do the rest.

Alice
supervised her team as they deployed the mortar on the very spot Byatt had selected. They were all young burly lads, selected for strong backs able to lug the mortar and its ammunition. They might have been eager but as raw recruits, her role was, as much as anything, to act as a steadying influence and to make sure they ran when they needed to.

“All set?” she asked.

“Ready to rock and roll,” one of them answered brashly.

She did a visual double check and plugged in the pad. As it ran its own diagnostics, she checked the fuses on the four bombs laid out in readiness to fire. Without the luxury of spare ammunition for live fire practice, they’d had to rely on computer simulations. But no one ever claimed sims were enough.

“Alright,” she muttered to herself before glancing up at the rest of them. “Sit down, we have a few minutes.”

The wait was torturous. It might have been easier if they could have seen or heard something – anything,  but they were a good kilometre and a half back from the roadway.

“Shit! Something’s got to have happened,” muttered a member of the detachment.

“No, it hasn’t,”
Alice replied as she intently studied her pad.

Another five minutes crept past and they all fidgeted uncomfortably. Although she said nothing,
Alice was starting to wonder at what point it would become prudent to retreat. For all they knew, the marines might have been blocked, intercepted or the target might have stopped. Then the pad beeped.

“First round into position,” she snapped, as the loader leapt forward.

As he raised the bomb over the muzzle he nearly lost his grip and let it slip. Alice intervened just in time to arrest its fall and glared at him. On the pad, a countdown started from five.

“Go!” she said as the count reached zero.

The concussion of the bomb launch propellant took them all by surprise. That hadn’t been in the simulation! But the mortar was already adjusting its aim and the pad beeped again.

“Number two! Number two!”
Alice barked.

As the second projectile went skyward the crew was already lifting the third into position. As the fourth bomb coughed forth, in the distance there could hear a series of booms at they landed.

“Should we wait to see if…” one man began to say.

“Pack it up and move!”
Alice cut him off as she yanked the pad out of its housing and stuffed it into her pack.

The ammunition bearers were already off and running while two other members of the team wrestled out the tube. The last three tried to remove the base plate, but due to concussion it had been forced into the ground and they couldn’t get purchase. Swearing savagely,
Alice snatched the crowbar they’d brought for that very purpose. Ramming it under the lip of the plate, she levered it up.

“Go! Go! Go!” she shouted as they got it out and the four of them set off after the others.

In the distance she could hear the report of small arms fire interspersed by the heavier rattle of the machinegun. By the time they reached the number two point, over a kilometre distant from the first, there was a stitch in her side and Alice was wheezing like a broken bellows. But they got the mortar set up and gathered their breath as they waited.

In the distance, the shooting petered out and
Alice glanced at her watch. If the ambush had gone to plan the marines would be starting to fall back by now. Then Alice caught the sound of something she had not heard since Douglas Base and had hoped never to hear again – incoming missiles.

“Get down!” she roared as she dived for the ground.

Explosions ripped through the forest in and around their former position. The next salvo to land was further away. As she hugged the earth, the radio briefly crackled to life in her ear.

“All units fall back to the rally point.”

Incoming missiles were still tearing up the forest. Given time, the whole area was likely to be blanketed in explosives. But for the moment they were clear.

“Everyone up!”
Alice called out as she scrambled to her feet. “We’re bugging out!” 

___________________________

A series of images clicked up on the screen. In the first, a convoy of bulk cargo movers burned. The cab area of each machine was riddled with bullet holes. In the next image, fires burned across acres of what had been ripening crops, while the foreground harvester exploded. As the last of the images disappeared, Colonel Dautsch rose from his seat.

“A complete success,” he said as he slapped the table enthusiastically. “Everyone did very well. Four bulk movers destroyed and several harvester and irrigation machines knocked out. There’s no doubt that we’ve completely neutralised food production efforts in this region. This was our first big operation and it has been a success. Well done to you all.”

Alice
slipped out of the command tent a short while later and into the night. Unlike most of those who had taken part in the attack, she didn’t much feel like celebrating.

The marine camp was at the north edge of a roughly fifty kilometre wide circle that they semi-jokingly referred to as
Camp Dautsch.

“You look perturbed,” the man himself observed as he approached
Alice.

She was lying on the ground, staring up through the branches of the forest canopy at the stars. Behind them she could hear the celebration still going on. It had taken a week to make it back to base after the raid, but sore feet weren’t the only reason she didn’t feel much like partying.

“Anyone else would just say worried,” she replied without looking round.

“So you are worried?”

“For about two years and counting,” she said. “I wonder whether we’ve woken the sleeping giant.”

Dautsch settled himself beside her.

“They were never really sleeping,” he replied. “But yes, we have definitely made them aware that we are out here. An unavoidable side effect I’m afraid.”

“Is it really worth it, Colonel? I mean, how will the loss of a few trucks affect a war?”

“On its own, it’s not. Then again, there is pretty much nothing that does,” he replied calmly. “But we are forcing them to consume resources protecting both their farm lands and supply lines. That’s often how war is waged as a resources game where it’s about how much you have and how efficiently you use it. We don’t know why they were growing those crops. They could be to support settlers they intend to bring in or it could be to feed their military. Either way, at least we put a small spanner in their works.” 

___________________________

The next few months passed mostly quietly with periodic spasms of activity. There were several more attacks. Dautsch was careful to ensure that their operations did not centre on the region of the farms and camps. Instead, he chose a blank spot on the map and made sure any activities, which the Nameless were likely to be aware of, circled this point.

A couple of months after the first attack, the Nameless finally put two and two together. They carpet bombed the area and then repeatedly hit it from orbit. By that time however, the marines had expended most of their ammunition and Dautsch was content to allow the Nameless to think that their problem had been solved. So that, Alice assumed, was that.

“We need to make contact,” Dautsch opened the weekly meeting.

Most of the group had dispersed across the whole region in preparation for the harvest season, when every strong back would be needed to get the crops in.

“With who?” asked William.

Dautsch pointed directly upwards.

“Those scout ships are coming through weekly now,” he said. “I know that we’ve all found it a comfort to hear those transmissions, but we need something more substantial than comfort.”

“A supply drop, sir? Into enemy held territory?” Martoma asked.

“Well, those who don’t ask, don’t get,” Dautsch replied glibly, before assuming a more serious expression. “There are a number of good reasons to contact the fleet. Firstly and if possible, a supply drop would improve our position. Secondly, at the moment we know that they’re there, but they don’t know we’re here. If they know for certain that people still remain, then that might encourage them to get a move on and liberate the planet. However, the challenge isn’t to find a reason to communicate with the scouts – it’s to find a means that doesn’t immediately invite an orbital strike on our position.”

“Well, broadly you have two options,” said Stephan Host, a pre-war communications technician, “radio or laser. Laser requires a tracking system to aim it…”

“Which we don’t have anymore,” Alice interrupted.

“Correct,” Host agreed. “That leaves us with option number two – a radio transmission.”

“Which the Nameless will hear and respond to,” Martoma said.

“Yup,” Host nodded.

“Is a big transmitter needed?” Alice asked.

“No.” This time Dautsch was the one to reply. “Those scouts have very sensitive communications packages and they are coming pretty close to Landfall.”

“Well, there are still a lot of radio transmitters around. Every human settlements should have one,” Martoma said.

“Yeah,” Host added enthusiastically. “In fact, we can use a lot of old hardware. There are hard lines connecting various settlements. It wouldn’t be hard to rig a set-up that will allow us to send a transmission while staying a nice comfortable distance from the transmitter.”

“Pity we’ll get some settlement blown off the map for the sake of one message,” Alice remarked.

“Hopefully they’ll do that,” Dautsch said.

When they looked at him he added: “I’m perfectly happy for them to keep thinking they can solve problems by bombing them instead of putting boots on the ground.”

Three weeks later Alice waited patiently as Host fussed with the connection where they’d spliced into the fibre optic cable. With the harvest of the banana patata crops under way, only a small detachment with a couple of marines for protection could be spared. It had been a nerve-wracking week, creeping into the small town that had once been a part of the Italian colony on Landfall. Aside from a number of wind turbines spinning on one of the hills that surrounded the settlement, nothing had been moving. There were signs of a hurried evacuation and the flora of Landfall was already beginning to reclaim this small abandoned outpost of humankind. There had been no way to know whether the Nameless were watching. To Alice, it would have made a lot of sense for them to do so. There were substantial amounts of useful supplies lying around – in many respects the town could easily have been a tethered goat. But the Nameless failed to put in an appearance before they reactivated the small radio transmitter they’d found in the town hall.