The Landfall Campaign (The Nameless War)

by Edmond Barrett

  “In the name of self interest,” Chris observed.

  “Quite so, Ambassador. It is the purest of motives. Please inform your governments that we will not prove a distraction. Concentrate on winning your war. If you can.”

  Chapter Eight

  Drawing of Battle Lines

  17th January 2067

  Burns. Probably the injury most feared by any serviceman. It wasn’t the pain or loss of functionality they dreaded. It was disfigurement. Yet military service carried so many risks of suffering such an injury. For that reason the burns wing in Douglas’s underground hospital was large, equipped with state-of-the-art equipment and manned by medical personnel versed in the most up to date treatments. Although huge, the bulk of the unit had never seen a patient until the day they launched the anti-ship missiles. Even now, nearly two weeks after the event, every bed was occupied.

  One hundred-and-eighty-three civilians and five marines had been killed outright by backwash from the missiles. Those closest to the silos had been burnt beyond any kind of recognition. There were another five hundred-and-seventeen cases of serious burns and more than three hundred more minor cases, as well as dozens with trampling injuries. Eulenburg found the smell on the unit, a mix of antiseptic and burnt flesh, absolutely sickening, but even so he spent time there every day.

  Brigadier Chevalier wasn’t the worst injured person on the ward but he was still a horrific sight. The clear plastic sheeting coving his face protected his seared flesh but did little to hide the worst of his injuries. His arms were laid out on top of the sheets and his left hand was swathed in bandages, where the doctors had amputated the charred remains of the fingers. The steady bleep of the monitoring machine changed pace as the Brigadier started to wake up. Even now the Brigadier seemed intent on living a regimented life, waking as he did around 7pm each evening.

  “Alfred?” he whispered.

  Eulenburg stirred from the chair he’d been drowsing in.

  “I’m here Sebastian.”

  Chevalier moved sluggishly as his drugged brain slowly spun up.

  “There was… a woman… child… were they…?”

  Chevalier had asked the same question every day since he first woke. Every day Eulenburg had to give the same terrible answer.

  “The woman, she’s here, in one of the other wards. The child was too badly burned. The surgeons couldn’t save him.”

  Beneath the plastic bandages Chevalier’s eyes screwed up. Probably the worst thing about the drugs was that he didn’t seem to have any memory of the days since the attack. Each day the news hit him just as hard as it had the first time her heard it.

  He went still again and after a few minutes Eulenburg decided he had gone back to sleep, so started to gather up his work.

  “Alfred?” his voice was a little sharper than it had been.

  “Yes, I’m still here.”

  “How long?”

  “It’s been eleven days.”

  “What have I missed?”

  “They haven’t attacked again, but they haven’t withdrawn either. The Americans launched a strike with their space fighters. They burned down a couple of escorts and badly damaged a cruiser but lost half their fighters doing it. The Nameless have been keeping their distance but they are deploying scores of satellites.”

  “They’re going to move against us again,” Chevalier said slowly.

  “Yes, the commanders at Endeavour and Anshan believe it will be a sustained bombardment.”

  There was a long pause before Chevalier replied.

  “You said they’re launching satellites.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then they intend to make a landing.”

  “You believe so?”

  “If they intended bomb…” Chevalier broke off coughing, then groaned as the movement jolted damaged flesh. “If they intended to bombard, they would have already done it by now. They’re going to make a landing.” By the end of the sentence the Brigadier’s voice had reduced to a near croak. “You have to be ready.”

  “We will Sebastian. You rest now.”

  He needn’t have spoken. The Brigadier had already drifted off again.

  At the double-doors into the ward, his two marine bodyguards were waiting patiently. Eulenburg hated to think of them as such, but that was exactly what they were. After ordering the launch of missiles that had killed or maimed hundreds, he could no longer walk safely around his own base. But that wasn’t his biggest concern. Bombardment or landing, Eulenburg had no particular conviction on which of those two courses the Nameless would take. The question that occupied his every waking moment was whether he could turn the Nameless aside when inevitably they came again.

  “Admiral Eulenburg.” Helen Reynolds, the British Governor was waiting in his outer office. The past few weeks had seen the Governor become a regular visitor. Prior to the attack on Baden, Eulenburg would have said that Douglas was well prepared to accept and care for the civilian population, should it ever become necessary. He would have been wrong. The fleet didn’t have the mechanisms in place to manage the sheer mass of humanity inhabiting the subterranean world of Douglas. There were plenty of toilets, washrooms, sewage plants and the rest of the physical infrastructure. But the necessary bureaucracy just wasn’t there. Instead Eulenburg had been reluctantly forced, to use the civilian structure. He would have liked to have used them on an unofficial basis. That way he could have dipped into the administration as he required it, ignoring or sidelining any troublemakers. But Governor Reynolds was too canny for that. Much of his unhappiness stemmed from having to acknowledge the bureaucracy’s own chain of command, which meant requests had to go through the civilian governors. Reynolds had become their de facto spokeswoman, a position made uncomfortable by her very clear disapproval of his conduct so far.

  “How’s the Brigadier?”

  “He seems to be improving, Madam Governor. The danger for him seems to be passing. Would you like to come through,” he replied. Disapproving or not, the Governor was enough of a professional not to make their disagreement too public.

  “What can I do for you today?” he asked as he close the hatch behind them.

  “You can stop stonewalling me for a start.” Of course open disagreement in public and open disagreement in private were two totally different ball games.

  “I don’t believe I have been stonewalling anyone Governor,” Eulenburg replied as he seated himself.

  “On behalf of the Civil Council I have been asking for details of your future plans. Your office has made no reply.” Reynolds gestured over her shoulder. “I don’t think that our requests are sitting in your secretary’s email inbox. I would remind you Admiral that Battle Fleet does answer to the civilian authorities.”

  “In turn I would remind you Governor, that Battle Fleet answers to the civilian authorities on Earth,” he replied as he sat down and waved her into the opposite seat. “I in turn answer directly to my military superiors but only to those superiors.”

  “We have co-operated with your command…”

  “Which I am grateful for,” Eulenburg interjected.

  “That co-operation can be withdrawn,” Reynolds finished flatly.

  Eulenburg forced himself not to visibly react. He’d known his stock had fallen with the civilian leadership but not to the point of them issuing ultimatums.

  “To what end? What is it the council wants?” he asked evenly.

  “Oversight on military operations, including but not limited to, command postings and details of plans. And authority over communications between this base and Earth.”

  “Consideration and consultation on future plans? Do you or any members of the Council have military experience?”

  “We have our own military advisers.”

  “Those are line officers with their own responsibilities, Governor. You’ll be pulling them away from those responsibilities.”

  “Nonetheless, we feel it is necessary. Without intending any slur Admiral, your own experi
ence is, I believe, relatively limited, and with Brigadier Chevalier… unavailable, we believe that changes in postings are needed. You would retain administrative control over the base, but there are a number of other candidates for active control of the defence.”

  Eulenburg rubbed his chin for a moment before replying.

  “A military force cannot operate as a democracy. In a military setting such as we now find ourselves, there is no place for discussion, debates or votes. To attempt such will lead us to disaster.”

  “Like the disaster we had nearly two weeks ago,” Reynolds replied sharply.

  Eulenburg felt himself getting hot and he longed to shout the woman out of his office. She wasn’t there when the decision had to be made. She had only the most tentative understanding of what the alternative would have been but to throw her out would play directly into her hands.

  “I am sure than the events of the thirtieth will be subject to an inquiry, which I will not pre-empt. In the meantime I will not share or hand over command, except at the direction of my lawful superiors.”

  “Then we will have to withdraw our forces,” Reynolds said as she started to get to her feet.

  “Withdraw them to where, Governor?” he asked. “This is one of only three protected areas on the planet. I don’t have the means to move you or your population to the other two, nor do they have the means to accept you.”

  “You misunderstand me Admiral. Our military forces will be instructed to no longer accept orders from your command. Until our terms are met, instructions to the various contingents will have to go through the civil authorities of those nations.”

  Terms? Demands more like it, Eulenburg thought to himself. Reynolds wasn’t stupid. Even a civilian would know that to try to route tactical military orders through a non-military command structure would render their response to developments as slow as a three-legged arthritic hedgehog. It wasn’t hard to envision a scenario in which that would prove disastrous, yet he would still be left carrying the can. And it was so tempting to give in. Let someone else shoulder the burden. Yet who could they replace him with?

  “I regret it has come to this Admiral,” Reynolds said as she got to her feet, “because I do respect what you have had to do here, but we feel that this is a very necessary move and ultimately Battle Fleet serves, it does not command.”

  He believed her. They weren’t acting out of malice or even politics. They were searching desperately for someone they believed could deliver. But he was going to have to stand in their way.

  “Very well Madam Governor, then I will require your forces to vacate their current positions within the next twelve hours.”

  Reynolds was halfway to the door, when he spoke and she stopped dead in her tracks. She turned back to him.

  “Are you proposing to drive our military forces from this base, Admiral?” She asked in a shocked voice. Whether the shock was genuine or not he couldn’t say.

  “Quite the opposite Governor, I expect them to move underground to the shelters. Battle Fleet Marines will take up their positions on the surface.”

  “You don’t have enough troops!”

  “No, I don’t,” Eulenburg replied after a pause. “However on my base there are only going to be two kinds of people. Defenders under my command and those who I must defend. If your troops are being removed from command, then they revert to the second category, in which case their place is beneath ground in the main shelters.”

  “That is ridiculous!”

  Eulenburg made no reply as he stared at her.

  Reynolds glared back.

  This is how wars start, he thought to himself. Two sides back each other into a corner and in the end both are afraid to blink in case they appear weak. Many years and countless dead later, people wonder how men of reason could have allowed something like this to happen. We can’t afford that. I’ll blink, but only once.

  “I am willing to give you logs for off-planet communications, as well as access to communication with your governments, subordinate to military necessity. Furthermore I will allow an observer into my headquarters.”

  “That falls well short of what we’ve asked for,” Reynolds replied heatedly.

  “It is as much as I am prepared to offer.”

  Reynolds stared at him, her eyes searching. Eulenburg kept his expression neutral. When she spoke, he knew he’d won the round.

  “I will have to speak to the rest of the Council about this.”

  “And the status of the national troops while these deliberations are underway?”

  “They will remain under Battle Fleet command until a decision has been made.”

  “Very well Governor. I await your decision.”

  Reynolds stalked out. She didn’t quite slam the hatch but Eulenburg still winced. I’m going to pay for that someday, he thought to himself.

  There was a ton of administrative work to be done but Eulenburg was unable to concentrate on any of it. He had considered himself to be politically pretty aware, but if today’s discussion proved anything at all, it was that there had been a catastrophic breakdown in trust between himself and the civil authorities, one he hadn’t even been aware of. They’d tried to take his command away from him. For all the stress and grief the posting had cost him in the past few weeks, the thought of this attempt still made his blood boil. They might yet succeed. Undoubtedly messages would be sent back to Earth asking for his dismissal. He might well in a few days time receive orders to relinquish command, an order that might be in part justified.

  He knew himself to be first and foremost a staff rather than a line officer, but he had done time in line postings. Chevalier was a far more competent ground commander than he would ever be and because he was a fellow Battle Fleet officer, abdicating responsibility for ground operations to him had been possible. Unfortunately none of the remaining marine officers had the necessary seniority. Was it pride that made him cling to his command? He didn’t think so. He didn’t think it was the stubborn independence the fleet drilled into its officers and crew either. If it was just a matter of having a ground commander, then handing over to one of the senior national military officers would make sense. But there was more to Douglas Base than ground defences. The space above Landfall had to be contested and those officers didn’t have anything even resembling the necessary experience of running space operations. In the here and now, he was still the best available.

  There was a tap at the door.

  “Come in.”

  Captain Gillum entered.

  “You asked to see me, sir?” he said.

  “Yes Captain, I need you to do something for me and I need you to do it personally. Send an FTL transmission to Earth, then delete it from the logs.”

  “Sir?”

  Eulenburg ignored the Captain’s exclamation.

  “The message is to read: Marine commander Douglas Base down, stop. Request dispatch of replacement officer.”

  Gillum hesitated for a moment then took out his digital notebook.

  “Sir, may I ask whether this is political?”

  “Extremely, Captain.”

  “Very well sir, the message will be away within the hour.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  If they were going to order him to relinquish command, then the reply would likely be as quick as transmission lag would allow. In a little over three days he’d know.

  20th January 2067

  “What are they?” Reynolds asked.

  The three of them were standing in one of the small annexes to Four C looking at a strange object on the screen.

  “I don’t know, Governor,” Gillum said. “They’re about fifty metres long and cylinder shaped, with a diameter of ten metres. There’s one that has gone into orbit in the last hour, with another six more on track to make orbital insertion at intervals over the next twenty hours.”

  “Weapons?” Eulenburg asked quietly.

  “They seem to be heading for geostationary orbit, sir. That puts them well c
lear of going over the top of us or any of the other shelters. However that doesn’t preclude the possibility of weapon platforms.”

  “And you didn’t spot these things coming?” Reynolds asked accusingly.

  “We did detect them Madam,” Gillum replied with studied patience. “We saw a couple of Nameless ships approach the planet to the two light second mark and release them. But it wasn’t until the first one got close enough for a visual inspection that we realised that they were different from the satellites the Nameless have been launching for weeks.”

  “Could we shoot them down or blow them up with missile defence?” she asked.

  “I have a grand total of fourteen missiles left in the silos Governor and another thirty in the stores. These could be no more than decoys.”

  “To be honest sir, I don’t think they are. You see they haven’t come alone.” Gillum pressed a button and the image of the cylinder was replaced by one of another design of satellite.

  “These ones are about ten metres high by six wide. There are two of them for each of the cylinders. The pair that has already gone into orbit is positioned twenty kilometres on either side of the cylinder.”

  “Defences,” Eulenburg said with a sigh.

  “It certainly looks that way, sir,” Gillum said. “Although it could still be a decoy, something to lure us out. The second one will achieve orbit in the next half hour, the remaining five will arrive at three-hour intervals.”

  Eulenburg stared at the screen for several minutes before replying.