The Landfall Campaign (The Nameless War)

by Edmond Barrett

  THE LANDFALL CAMPAIGN

  Book Two of the Nameless War Trilogy

  By Edmond Barrett

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 2012 Edmond Barrett

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the author

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Kindle Version 1.1

  DEDICATION

  With thanks to my parents for their support, to my test readers Phil and Peter, my editor Jan and Sorcha for her encouragement.

  Content

  Chapter 1 View From the Sidelines

  Chapter 2 Outlook and Observation

  Chapter 3 The Day Before The Storm

  Chapter 4 Scarecrow

  Chapter 5 The Return

  Chapter 6 Resumption of Hostilities

  Chapter 7 Diplomatic Feelers

  Chapter 8 Drawing of Battle Lines

  Chapter 9 Our Man In…

  Chapter 10 Moment for Reflection

  Chapter 11 Come the Deceiver

  Chapter 12 Arrivals

  Chapter 13 The Front

  Chapter 14 The Last Hurrah

  Chapter 15 Cry for Help

  Chapter 16 Operation Kite String

  Chapter 17 What We Missed

  Chapter 18 The Slip

  Chapter 19 The Breaking of the Line

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Chapter One

  View from the Sideline

  The sun crested the Mountains of Hetori, bathing the mighty Ormy Rift Valley in its soft violet light. On the far side of the valley, the House of Speakers, home to the government of the Aèllr Confederacy of Worlds, stood backed up to the very edge of the precipice. Halfway up the sheer east wall of the building, a balcony projected out above a one thousand-metre drop to the floor of the valley.

  In the eyes of many Aèllr, it was the most beautiful view anywhere in the Confederacy and as with every morning, Prime Speaker Unqin was there to greet the rising sun. As always, she felt her spirits lift and her sense of balance return as she gazed at the untamed beauty of the valley below. To her left and right, government buildings lined the edge of the rift as far as the eye could see.

  Closing her eyes Unqin shifted pigmentation to allow her skin to soak up the sun’s rays. As she stood there absorbing the sun’s energy, Unqin allowed her mind to drift, to consider the day ahead, and its possible problems and solutions. Much of the day would be taken up with routine matters, but the first item was far and away the most important.

  Behind her, inside the building there was a tap at the door. A moment later Unqin’s assistant stepped in.

  “Speaker, Fleet Commandant Icro has arrived. Should I send her in?”

  “Please do,” Unqin replied, without moving.

  After a few moments the Commandant stepped into the room and closed the door quietly behind her.

  “Please, join me Commandant.”

  Icro did as she was asked and for a time the two of them stood silently on the balcony.

  “So, I understand that a ship arrived from the border region. It brought news I presume?”

  “That is correct Speaker. The vessel was a fast messenger ship that was deployed out on the frontier for urgent communications. The area commandant judged the information vital, an analysis I agree with. Speaker, the humans are now at war with the faceless ones.”

  Unqin’s head dipped until her breathing vents rested lightly on her chest.

  “Has the accuracy of your information been confirmed Commandant?”

  “Yes Speaker. Our worst fears on this matter have come to pass,” Icro replied sombrely.

  Unqin’s sense of oneness disappeared. With a sigh she turned and entered the office. Icro followed and seated herself.

  “Tell me everything Commandant.”

  “Thirty days ago, the Faceless - or the Nameless as the humans prefer to call them - opened their war against humanity. They attacked the base the humans call Baden. They destroyed it, dispersing the fleet stationed there. They then mounted an offensive on Earth itself in a clear attempt to win victory at a single stroke.”

  “Have they succeeded?” Unqin asked with alarm.

  “The situation is not clear. The time lag due to distance is working against us, Speaker.”

  The Commandant looked somewhat evasive, with her skin turning to a mottled shade that suggested discomfort.

  “Commandant, that seems a somewhat vague answer,” Unqin observed. “Is it not the case that your division can read both the human radio signals, also their faster than light transmissions? Wasn’t the frontier decoding station constructed at considerable expense for that very purpose?”

  “What you say is in partly correct but regrettably the situation has now altered. We no longer possess the means to read intercepted communications,” Icro admitted.

  “The timing of this seems strangely unfortunate, Commandant.”

  “It’s no coincidence Speaker. In the opening days of the conflict our information gatherers noticed a shift in the coding protocols of the human Battle Fleet. It took a number of days for the protocols to be adopted by their entire fleet, but once done our access to their communications was removed. We surmise that the humans had a contingency plan in place to negate any pre-war decoding. Regrettably they succeeded.”

  Unqin sat silent for a time.

  “Is any pertinent information source still available to us?” she eventually asked.

  “Human commercial and some of their governmental transmissions remain open to us Speaker,” Icro replied. “Regrettably however, the quality of information from these sources is poor and in time I expect that even these will be lost to us.”

  “I see.” Unqin considered what she had heard so far before looking once more at Icro. “When will we once more be in a position to read their communications?”

  “I have studied as much human military history as I can Speaker. The humans have much experience on matters of coding, principally how much of a disadvantage one side will be put at if their enemies can read and discern the meaning of their communications. We have striven to unlock the human codes, while they in turn have worked to keep us out. In this matter they have been more successful. Our former access to their communications was the product of three years diligent labour. It is impossible to say when, or even if, that doorway will once again open itself to us.”

  “It concerns me greatly that we are losing such information at a time when our need is greatest Commandant. All efforts must be made to restore access. Putting this aside for a moment, tell me what you know, what you suspect.”

  “The humans have avoided immediate destruction. The opening move by the Faceless has failed.”

  The Commandant’s reply was flat and lacked explanation or the subtle flow of Aèllr wordplay. Unqin was shaken by realisation that her military commander was frightened. Rising from her seat she returned to the balcony. The beauty of the mountains and valley remained the same but to her eyes seemed diminished. The Commandant followed her out to gaze down on the valley.

  “Answer me this. Measured against the strength of the Faceless, is the victory or survival of the humans possible?”

  “We have
studied the problem as much as the available information allows. The conclusion reached has not been favourable. It is our belief that the humans cannot win the war they now find themselves fighting.”

  “It is my recollection Commandant that the same was said when we fought the humans, yet we were proven wrong.”

  “The Faceless are not the Aèllr. They share not our fears, nor our beliefs or values. They are not constrained as we were. For that reason alone, they will defeat the humans. The humans will fight, it is what they excel at, but this time they will be defeated. We both know that when the humans have been wiped out, the Faceless will without hesitation turn upon us.”

  Unqin did not reply. She stood eyes closed, facing towards the mountains.

  “Speaker, our people are not prepared for another war and our fleets are not ready. I need the passage of another ten years. No less.”

  Unqin did not answer immediately. The Commandant waited patiently.

  “More information must be sought before we can find a way through. I can see that we have a measure of time in which to work; it is my hope that a way to avoid being drawn into this conflict will open itself to us. I will detain you no further Commandant.”

  Icro did not move.

  “There is one final matter Speaker, one to which I will need if not an immediate answer, then one very soon. What course of action should our Area Commandants or Ship Seniors take, when human refugee ships start crossing into our space?”

  Chapter Two

  Outlook and Observation

  31st August 2066

  Six months ago there had been serious talk of a downturn in starship construction. A twenty year glut of building seemed to have finally caught up with the industry, as supply started to outstrip demand. Expansion plans were either pared back or abandoned. The stock market analysts confidently predicted that at least a few of the smaller players would either be absorbed or go to the wall.

  That was then. Now every last one of Earth’s orbital shipyards was a hive activity. Yards that had laid off workers were now frantically trying to hire anyone with experience. Even as workers toiled inside the yards, yet more laboured outside in an effort to expand capacity.

  Those yards were now packed with the battered hulls of nearly half the fleet’s surviving ships. So urgent was the need for those ships that several partly completed vessels had been towed out of the way to make room for urgent repair work, yet there were still more warships waiting for a space. In one or two yards however there were some ships that were far enough along to be worth completing, even though their purpose would be different from that for which they were originally intended.

  Vice Admiral Paul Lewis, Commander in Chief of the Home Fleet stood in the observation lounge of the Isli yard looking out at what would soon be the fleet’s three newest warships - provided you stretched the definition of the word ‘warship’ to breaking point!

  “Freighter hulls… so structural integrity is based in the core rather than the skin, therefore there can be no external mountings capable of holding armour. On top of that they have no meaningful internal subdivision and the machinery is of a standard commercial design that puts emphasis on ease of maintenance rather than high-end performance.” Lewis was speaking in a flat voice and the two other men in the room both winced at his tone. “Each ship has only a single reactor, with no redundancy in either heat sinks or radiators. Each of the two bigger ships has a main armament of just four single-mounted flak guns, the smaller one has only two and all three have large blind spots both forward and astern.” Lewis paused before slowly turning, a careful movement necessitated by the location of the observation lounge outside the shipyard centrifuge, which meant that it was only the small magnets in the heels of the Admiral’s boots that kept him in contact with the deck. “This is what we’re calling warships these days?”

  A tall Englishman in his early sixties with slate grey hair and bushy eyebrows, decades in the cramped confines of starships had given Lewis a slight habitual stoop. Even so he still loomed over the civilian in front of him.

  When they had first arrived the yard manager had looked rather pleased with his facility’s work. Certainly they’d worked hard to complete the necessary design and construction work in less than six weeks. But that didn’t change the fact that the fruits of their labours would still only be civilian vessels masquerading as warships. After the Admiral’s scathing review the manager now looked as if he would rather be somewhere, indeed anywhere, else. Even the normally dour Lewis was driven to offer some encouragement.

  “I hope that we can continue to expect the same level of commitment and dedication you and your staff have shown with this project.”

  “You can be assured there will be no let up,” the manager replied, perking up. “We will be moving the first of these three out within the week and the other two will follow within ten days. Two of your cruisers have been earmarked as our first repair projects…” He prattled on as the Admiral turned back to the viewing port.

  “Has headquarters assigned names and designations to these three new juggernauts?” Lewis asked as his shuttle dived away from the Isli platform and into Earth’s atmosphere. The inspection had been an impromptu one, as much to kill time as anything else.

  “Yes sir,” replied Lewis’s chief of staff, Captain Tim Sheehan, the only other person in the shuttle’s passenger compartment. Sheehan always seemed to be able to hold a vast amount of information in his head, ready to be supplied when required. He really had no business being on active service. A high-speed collision with a bulkhead had cracked his wrist and being in and out of micro-gravity wasn’t going to help the healing process. But he had declined the offer of a ground posting. “They’re to be called Buffalo, Bison and Wildebeest, sir. Headquarters is calling them auxiliary cruisers.”

  The smile that briefly appeared on Lewis’s face had nothing to do with humour.

  “Clearly someone at headquarters has too much appreciation of history to call them Armed Merchant Cruisers.”

  “Sir?”

  “AMCs. Generally small passenger liners painted grey with a few old guns bolted on. They were used in the big wars of the early twentieth. When they came up against real warships they generally fought very bravely but sank very quickly.”

  “Those ships could be very useful as ammunition tenders, sir,” Sheehan replied.

  “Problem is we’re likely going to have to use them as frontline warships for at least six months first. God help the poor beggars we put onto them,” Lewis said, shaking his head before turning back to the porthole. Outside flames lapped over the glass as the shuttle started to make re-entry.

  His reflection in the glass stared back at him. It disturbed him the way his face looked tired and years older than the last time he looked properly. There were lines, which he didn’t recall being there a few weeks previously and his hair seemed to be a slightly paler shade of grey. His sixty-two years had never felt heavier than they did right now.

  A little over a year earlier the Battle Fleet ship Mississippi, on survey duties had encountered another vessel of unfamiliar design. Mississippi had attempted first contact protocol but was attacked. The ensuing clash had been brief and brutal. The human ship survived and the alien’s didn’t.

  In the aftermath of that border clash the fleet sent out further ships to find and assess this nameless race. But for nearly a year that first encounter was the only sign of the Nameless, as the press had dubbed them. That changed on the twenty-third of July when without warning an entire fleet of Nameless warships fell upon Battle Fleet’s frontier base at Baden, home to the Third Fleet.

  The Nameless did what humanity’s understanding of physics said was impossible. Baden was built onto the side of a giant asteroid to take advantage of an effect known as the mass shadow, a region of space surrounding large spatial bodies in which no ship could enter or exit jump space. The Nameless ships were apparently not so heavily constrained, allowing them to drop into real space alread
y within firing range. Those ships of the Third Fleet that survived did so by fleeing.

  The Nameless were still subject to some constraints though. During the course of the retreat one of the survivors from Baden observed how close they could jump in near a planet. Priceless information in the long run but it hadn’t been of any immediate help to Lewis as he attempted to stop the Nameless offensive short of Earth.

  At Alpha Centauri the Home Fleet succeeded, but the losses had been grievous, with almost every surviving ship damaged to some degree. Which explained Lewis’s current status as a commanding officer with almost nothing left to command. Lewis remained lost in thought as the shuttle completed re-entry and inserted into Earth’s teeming air traffic.

  ___________________________

  Fleet Admiral Cody Wingate, senior military officer of the fleet, scrolled down through the report on his computer screen. For a year the fleet had tried to analyse the capabilities of the Nameless from the scraps of information brought back by the Mississippi. It had all seemed more like an academic exercise than anything else. Now those same analysts were trying to gain strategic insight and develop frontline tactics from information that - despite two major battles - was still little better than scraps. Everything from ships’ readings to irradiated fragments of wreckage was being examined and classified. While much of this process resulted in duplication, there was always the possibility that something vital might be hidden amidst the mass of data. Computer filters could only do so much.

  Wingate hit a key to move the page down. Of course once it was coded, catalogued and written up, the information still had to be drilled into the heads of the men and women who would actually be doing the fighting. Wingate just wished they could provide more details. Words like assumed, estimated and thought probable were appearing far too regularly in the various appraisals and reports.