“Some of them sir. Mostly though I think it boils down to a general unhappiness about the facilities here.”
“I see.”
When the shelters under Douglas Base had been built, comfort had not been high on the list of priorities. Certainly, facilities such as sewers and wash rooms had to be put in to ensure the health of the population but there was no getting around the fact that people were being asked to live in caves. Most of the various settlements on Landfall were light, airy, comfortable places. The shelters were none of these things and the grumbling had soon started. As the weeks crawled by with no alien ships overhead people grew increasingly surly about their confinement. The Christmas period appeared to have finally brought things to a head for some.
Eulenburg had attempted to alleviate the situation by setting up a tent city on the surface, but then the heavens opened. The northern hemisphere of Landfall experienced the wettest autumn on record, the tent city became a sea of mud and the abandoned homes in colonies started to look very appealing. If the Nameless had approached that would have solved one set of problems, admittedly at the expense of turning them into a different set, but in nearly four months their ships hadn’t come within light minutes of the planet. At the start of October a few of the Spanish colonists, whose homes were only a couple of dozen kilometres outside the base, had left. Eulenburg had no authority to stop them and with the distance so short, withholding transport was no barrier. It had unfortunately spurred on the complaints from the malcontents.
New Lexington was a small settlement several hundred kilometres south of Douglas. Nominally part of the United States colony, in the past decade it had become home for people who’d managed to fall out with their own original settlements. In practical terms it was now virtually an independent colony and with a political outlook slightly to the right of Attila the Hun, the residents of New Lexington were invariably obstructionist and outspoken. Unfortunately, because they were closer to Douglas than the main American colony on Landfall, they’d ended up as Eulenburg’s responsibility, along with their community leader Mister Wyman.
Loud, overbearing and stupid, yet convinced of his own superiority, Wyman had been pestering Eulenburg’s office almost from the moment he got off the plane. It was no wonder that the rest of the Americans didn’t want them back. Weighed down by a thousand other concerns, Eulenburg was at the end of his tether.
“Are the forms ready?”
“Yes sir, two hundred copies.”
“Alright, let him in.”
Eulenburg settled himself behind his desk as Casta led Wyman in.
“Mister Wyman,” Eulenburg said without getting up.
“As I have told you,” Wyman replied in his reedy voice, “it is Doctor.”
“The only kind of doctors that currently concern me are the kind that can apply bandages.”
“You know why I am here. You cannot continue to hold us against our will.”
“You know as well as I do Mister Wyman, you were evacuated here for your own safety. Your settlement has no overhead protect…”
“It doesn’t need it!” Wyman snapped. “If the Nameless haven’t come by now then they aren’t going to come. Instead we’re risking our health sitting in this dank hole while you and the rest of your lackeys…”
Eulenburg stopped listening. He’d heard it all before and this time was determined not to be drawn into a shouting match.
“I’m prepared to provide transport,” he said eventually. It took a few seconds for his response to percolate through to Wyman.
“About damn time and I can assure you that this matter will be taken up…” Wyman started up again.
“Provided that you and anyone else who wishes to leave this base sign this,” Eulenburg continued sliding a sheet of paper across the desk.
“What is it?” Wyman asked suspiciously.
“It is a disclaimer confirming that you have voluntarily left the protection of Douglas Base against the advice of the military commander, namely myself. It also states that you accept the fleet may not be able to re-evacuate you should the military situation change.”
“Now hang on!”
“No Mister Wyman. This time you will listen!” Eulenburg snarled. “Re-evacuation means sending a transport plane and its crew beyond the protective perimeter of this base. Depending on how fast the Nameless come in, there might not be enough time for a transport to reach your settlement, embark you and whatever idiots have followed you and return, before they arrive. I will not risk the lives of those under my command to protect you from your own folly.”
“But…”
“A transport will be available at ten hundred hours tomorrow. It will fly to any settlement to which at least fifty people want to return to. Anyone wishing to leave must complete a copy of the statement before they will be allowed to embark. Now you will have to excuse me Mister Wyman, I have other, more important matters to attend to.”
“Not that I am disagreeing with you sir, but that may well cost you,” Chevalier said as the two of them stood in Four C. With so many people now in the shelters, the command centre was a comparative bastion of calm. The officers and ratings, in concert with personnel at Anshan and Endeavour bases, continued to monitor the space above them. But the main emphasis of Eulenburg’s attention had shifted. It was no longer on the stars above or even the caves below. It was now on the surface.
“Without question Sebastian, there is no might about it. He is the kind of worm that can only be relied upon to cause trouble, whether dead or alive. If it gets him out of my hair for now, I will happily accept trouble in the future.”
“Sir, you’ll be leaving yourself very exposed.”
“Yes.”
“Sir…”
“Sebastian. The matter is closed!” Eulenburg snapped. Then shaking his head as if dislodging a bothersome fly he added: “we have too much else to do to worry about the fate of one fool. How is the work going?”
“About half the planned deep dugouts are now complete. We’d be going faster if you didn’t keep taking parts of my workforce away from me,” Chevalier replied accusingly.
“At the rate you’re going, you’ll completely excavate the shelters. I have to slow you down a bit.”
Chevalier smiled momentarily. Four months of solid work had produced a series of defensive lines unlike anything seen in at least a century. Three complete sets of fighting trenches now encircled the surface of Douglas Base, plus their attendant support and communication trenches. Now Chevalier’s combat engineers were busy constructing bunkers and deep dugouts to further protect the troops and their artillery.
As well as the three thousand men and women of the base’s marine contingent, soldiers from eight different nations manned these defences. Spain, Britain, France, Argentina, India, New Zealand, Japan, plus a very small contingent of Americans who were nominally there to protect the New Lexington colonists. That gave them a total fighting strength of a shade under eight thousand, defending a perimeter twenty kilometres long.
It was impressive on paper, but not so impressive if examined in detail. The frontline infantry were using four different kinds of assault rifle, none of whose ammunition was interchangeable. Added to that, most of the national forces were light formations, equipped with little in the way of armour or artillery. To top it all off was the question of communications. Three different kinds of communications equipment and five different languages made getting orders through quickly and accurately a potentially a dubious proposition.
The logistics were giving Eulenburg nightmares. More than once he’d found himself thinking of his pre-war workload with fond nostalgia. There was no help from outside either. The other shelters were busy with their own defences, while a single courier ship from Earth had arrived with a download that confirmed in detail what Eulenburg already suspected: there wasn’t going to be a relief force any time soon.
“Besides we have to get whatever we can out of the colonies now,” Eulenburg added with
a shrug as he shook himself out of his reverie.
“It will be harder to complete the fieldworks if we have to do them while in contact,” Chevalier pointed out. “We need those bunkers, and all the rest of it.”
“I don’t argue the point with you Sebastian. You are better versed on such matters, but we can’t have it every way. We need those supplies. We may be able to strengthen the fieldworks if we come under siege but once we’re cut off, that’s it. We have to gather everything we can now.”
Chevalier nodded and sighed. “I just don’t want you to overestimate those defences sir. We have done our best but the truth is there aren’t enough troops to man them.” He shook his head. “It’s little better than a piecrust. If an enemy ground forces gets a foothold on the plateau, we’ll never push them off. I just pray that we are not seriously tested.”
“Every night I have been asking God for that very same thing,” Eulenburg replied.
___________________________
“Okay, I stand corrected, that’s definitely the real deal,” Rob said out loud.
Alice Peats looked at the marine, then at the planes. Neither provided any enlightenment. Three warplanes stood lined up, gleaming dully in the artificial light. They looked pretty much the same as any others and she’d seen dozens in the past few weeks. For the life of her Alice couldn’t understand what the marine was getting so excited about.
“Told ya,” said the RAF sergeant who had come with them to unlock the hanger.
“What are they even doing here?” Rob asked.
“Standard Ministry of Defence balls up. They shipped them out here in crates. They’d just about got ‘em put back together when the Ministry decided it only wanted drop fighters out here. It was never worth shipping ‘em back,” the sergeant explained.
“Well they were kinda obsolete at that stage,” Rob remarked.
“Guys what is it?” Alice asked since the conversation didn’t seem to be going in an informative direction.
“Typhoon fighters.”
“And this is a big deal because…?”
“They are pure atmospheric aircraft. All the rest on the planet are drop fighters or space fighters.”
“So why are you getting all fan boy about this?”
“I am not getting fan boy! I just didn’t expect to see anything
like this. I mean they’ve been out of service for about fifteen years,” Rob replied indignantly.
“Oh marvellous! Museum pieces!”
The sergeant had been watching the exchange with amusement.
“So how long have you two been married?” he asked.
“Don’t even joke about that,” Alice replied sourly. “We’re supposed to be taking an inventory of stuff that is useful. Do museum pieces count as useful?”
“Well they do still fly,” said the sergeant.
“Really?” Alice asked, her stylus hovering over her computer pad.
“Well probably. We’ve done all the maintenance on them and engine tests, but we haven’t flown them since some tree hugger complained about pollutants being released into the high atmosphere.”
“What, they’re powered by fossil fuels? Do they burn coal?” Alice exclaimed.
“Aviation fuel. We have a couple of big tanks of fuel buried out at the edge of the field.”
Alice’s stylus stabbed downwards, to hit the NO box beside the question ‘useful’. Rob saw and immediately objected.
“These are still useful!”
“What as? Paperweights?”
“They’re still useful as fighters,” Rob replied.
“Fifty year old fighters?”
“Modern fighters can go faster, higher and carry a heavier payload but there is still a limit to just how much G-force the pilot can handle,” the sergeant explained. “If you were stupid enough to dogfight, these things could still nail you. When they were building these things, they reckoned they would be the last generation of manned fighters. People thought the planes that would follow would be remote drones. What happened at New York killed that idea.”
“Mark them down as a maybe,” Rob said. “Assuming we can get their fuel and spare parts to Douglas, they might still be useful.”
“Okay, you’re the boss,” Alice replied with a sigh as she altered the entry on the computer to MAYBE. “What else have you got round here? A consignment of swords?”
“Yeah actually. We use them for the guards of honour at weddings.”
As the three of them walked back across the airfield toward the shed where their squad leader had set up his temporary headquarters, Rob and the RAF man talked while Alice walked along behind reviewing her data. She’d joined Rob’s conversations with other military personnel a few times, before realising that it seemed to be the same conversation each time: griping about the food and joking about superiors. Soldiers seemed to be soldiers no matter where they came from. Until a few weeks ago Alice hadn’t realised just how many settlements there were on Landfall, or how many of them had military detachments or supplies.
For the first four weeks after Baden, Alice had been one of the trench diggers. At first there were dozens, then hundreds and finally thousands of people as far as the eye could see, busy moving the muddy earth. Then she found herself being reassigned as Headquarters shifted priorities.
It was decided that as many supplies as possible, military and civilian, needed to be gathered and brought to Douglas Base. This would involve liaising with different nationalities. Somewhere far below the surface, someone’s computer picked up the words ‘language expert’ in Alice’s records and to the military mind that sounded like ‘translator’. The degree of welcome they received varied from place to place. The commander of the Russian base in particular had clearly regarded the Battle Fleet personnel as invaders of his domain. Still the work had mostly been interesting for the survey team and the fact that it didn’t involve as much heavy lifting didn’t hurt either.
The other interesting thing had been the difference in the talk between the military and the civilians. A civilian by status but now dressed in military fatigues, Alice straddled the two groups and had become increasingly aware of the differences in opinion. The civilians thought the risk of attack was receding, the military that it was increasingly likely. Much as she wanted to believe the former, Alice was coming round to the military’s point of view. She could only hope that if the Nameless did arrive, that she and her squad wouldn’t find themselves stranded too far from Douglas.
___________________________
30th December 2066
P3 was one of six big passive sensor arrays that sat in high orbit around Landfall. Large web like structures, they monitored surrounding space as they orbited the planet, communicating with one another by laser hook ups and downloading their readings as they passed over the shelters. Much of their massive processing capability was dedicated to filtering out the background chatter from the planet. That task had become easier in the past few months as most of the surface transmitters shut down. For two months the only thing they had detected beyond natural emissions was the approach of a few fragments of Baden Base. Then abruptly that changed as three light seconds from Landfall, ships arrived. P3 registered the new arrivals and, after a few fractions of a second of electronic thought, beamed the data to the surface.
A kilometre below the surface of Douglas Base a sensor operator saw a new cluster of blips appear on his screen. Training and procedure immediately kicked in as he started to use his equipment to query the new arrivals.
“Contact. Sector Alpha Five. Ships making real space re-entry.”
The officer of day was instantly at his side peering at his screen.
“IFF?”
“Negative sir. I’m getting nothing from friend or foe.” As the seconds passed the quality of the data improved.
“Sir, all contacts have jumped in within the Red Line.”
The officer cursed softly before activating his intercom.
“Admiral sir, enemy sh
ips have just jumped in. They’re approaching the planet.”
“Two capital ships and six cruiser equivalents, with twelve escorts out in front, all on approach for orbital insertion,” Captain Gillum said pointing to the various groups of blips on the main display. “There are also these two back here. We got a look at one of them through the optics. It wasn’t a great look but enough to tell us it isn’t one of the designs in the files Earth sent us.”
“Support ships?” Chevalier asked.
“That’s one possibility sir,” Gillum replied, “certainly their propulsion systems seem to be smaller relative to their overall size than the rest. They are definitely setting the pace of the force. That would suggest support ships. The only thing is size. They look to be about the same length as the cruisers, but with a bigger beam.”
“Captain, how long until they achieve orbit?” Eulenburg asked quietly as he stared up at the big display, his arms crossed.
“At the moment sir, six and a half hours, assuming Hampton Roads doesn’t slow them down. About 3pm local time.”
“I have to go topside, sir,” Chevalier said. “We have half a million people up on the surface. We have to get them back underground.”
“Sebastian, you can organise that from here,” Eulenburg objected without taking his eyes off the screen.
“No sir. This I need to be able to see with my own eyes. Those people are exposed out there. They have to be moved underground as quickly as possible.”
“Alright, go.”
Chevalier paused only to salute before starting to stride away.
“Sebastian,” Eulenburg called after him, “be careful up there.”
Chevalier nodded and left.
“Admiral sir,” the call came from the coms section. “We’re getting a transmission from Endeavour base. It’s General Arlidge.”
“Put it through in the conference room.”
Arlidge’s image shimmered into existence along with that of US air force officer unknown to Eulenburg.
The Landfall Campaign (The Nameless War) Page 12