As he pulled on his survival suit Jeff mentally drafted a news report. “In time of war it is easy to forget that space is the most fundamentally hostile environment human beings have ever ventured into. The Nameless or any other alien species do not make space dangerous, they merely add to the danger. Even here, where there are no Nameless, the crew of K7 face danger as they maintain their diligent watch over the stars.”
Not bad, he thought to himself. Maybe a little too mawkish but it could be worked on. Now where the hell had he put his pencil?
As expected the scout showed signs of activity as soon as it exited the solar ejection mass so unquestionably the crew had at least in part survived. The question now was whether it continued its sweep of the system. Fortunately its drift had taken it within range of a powered down cruiser. Estimates on the probability of a first shot kill were high. This was fortunate. The situation around the gas giant was nearing crisis point. Balance had to be sought. They were all aware of their duty but a willingness to make sacrifice could not become eagerness or reluctance. The next moments would decide what course of action to take.
“Sorry skipper, but we are talking major burn outs down here,” said the engineer across the intercom. “It’s only the Lazarus systems that are keeping us going at all.” There were crackles on the link, which suggested to Jeff that the engines weren’t the only things that had been damaged. Once rebooted, some systems had started up again, but others remained dead.
“Thanks Chief,” Driscoll replied. “Bridge out. Any luck with the towed array?”
The petty officer shook her head. “No. Either the array didn’t fold up before it got cooked and has jammed or the winch is damaged. Either way nothing is moving.
Driscoll let out a long, aggravated sigh.
“Alright, jettison it. Helm hose it with the engine. Navigation. Make calculations to jump back to Junction.”
Jettisoning of the towed detection equipment was the scouts’ standard response to detecting a threat! The cruiser prepared to enga… No! Wait!
The scout’s engines fired only long enough to destroy the abandoned detection equipment before powering down again as it prepared to jump. This lack of urgency made clear the ships had not been sighted. Finally the scout dropped into jump space. All ships could reactivate their radiation shields. The incursion had unquestionably delayed the coming operation, as replacements for the lost crews would have to be sourced before the operation could begin. However this was an acceptable alternative to discovery. The aliens may be reluctant to dispatch further scouts to such an obviously dangerous system. At the very least it would be sometime before they returned. Perhaps long enough.
As K7 coasted down the jump conduit, Driscoll turned to Jeff.
“Well that’s that. Hopefully you’ll have a more exciting time with the Home Fleet.”
Chapter Eighteen
The Slip
17th August 2067
Jean Guynemer took a deep breath, adjusted his helmet, nodded to his partner and ducked under the surface. The chill of the water was breathtaking but Jean was already feeling his way forward. The rock pool was almost like the u-bend of a toilet and his helmeted head bumped along the underside of the rock. On either side he felt his shoulders brush against stone and for a moment he lodged. He didn’t panic, forced himself not to, and instead he twisted and was free. A moment later he popped to the surface on the far side. Once he’d got his breath back he looked around. His headlamp produced only a pitiful little glimmer against the depth of gloom. Levering himself out of the pool he picked up the little robotic remote they’d sent ahead and turned the machine so the camera faced him.
“George, I’m through. It’s about three meters and gets tight near this end,” he said before setting it back down.
The main arc lamp they’d brought didn’t do much more to push back the dark than their headlamps and the far end of the cavern remained shrouded in darkness. The air was bone penetratingly cold and there was the sound of the steady drip of water. The two men paused to look around. The caverns below Douglas Base didn’t conform to any single pattern. Some were smooth and dry, but the one they were in now was one of those with stalagmites and stalactites. So many that is was like an inside-out hedgehog. Both men knew that they were seeing something no human being had ever seen before. Under any other circumstances it would have been a moment to savour, but this visit was about business not pleasure. Quickly and quietly they set up a laser scanner and then waited as it swept the cave. Once they returned to the occupied caverns its readings would be incorporated into the overall map of the caves below Douglas. With that done they started to work their way forward along the walls, checking for cracks or any other signs of damage. When the fleet bombarded the Nameless artillery positions some of the strikes were within a few kilometres of the base. There had been a few small cave-ins from the shockwaves but someone had got it into their head that it might have weakened the whole structure of the mountain, which sounded pretty unlikely to Jean. But a survey of the caverns was demanded and once that was underway it seemed advisable to extend it out into those beyond the shelters. How far these went was currently anyone’s guess and both of them were enjoying the job immensely.
The military had insisted that they avoid leaving a trail by breaking stalagmites. Stupid really, Jean thought as he picked his way through. What proper caver would destroy the very caves they had come to see?
Half an hour after entering the cave they reached the far end and started to search along the back wall. Within a few minutes they’d found a rock pool like the one they’d entered through. Jean was leading, slowly picking his way forward and stepping carefully around delicate rock formations. Then to their left an opening appeared, roughly circular and two metres across. Jean peered round the edge. His headlamp made little impression on the dark. Behind him he heard George mutter something. Jean turned and saw that the beam from George’s headlamp had come to rest on something. It was a stalagmite, a couple of centimetres thick, perhaps the length of a pencil and broken off at the base. George picked up the piece and examined the end.
“Snapped off,” he commented.
“Shaken off perhaps,” Jean said. “Thinner ones would be more vulnerable to the shockwaves.”
George turned slowly on the spot, pausing on each stalagmite within a few metres of where he stood. There were no other breakages.
“Why just this one?” he wondered, twiddling it between his fingers.
“Wait there’s another one,” Jean said walking over to it. This next one was thicker, but the surface was just as clean, so just as recent. Looking around, he saw another, and beyond that another, leading back the way they had come.
“It can’t be them,” muttered George. “The military have made a mistake. They’ve sent us where someone else has already searched. They must have.”
Jean didn’t reply. Instead he followed the trail back across the cavern towards their side. It was there George saw it. A footprint – and it wasn’t human.
_____________________
“How could this be the case?” demanded Governor Gambon. “How could such an oversight have occurred? Why was no complete map made of the caverns?”
“Because there wasn’t a budget for it!” Eulenburg shouted back as he finally lost his temper. Thus far the meeting had amounted to almost two hours of utter hysteria as at least half the governors noisily panicked. In some respects the Admiral couldn’t blame them. There were over a million people in the shelters, while all the soldiers were on or near the surface. The only armed personnel down below were a couple of hundred policemen, half of them carrying nothing more than non-lethal weaponry. The idea of an army suddenly storming out of the darkness into the densely packed and helpless civilian population would chill anyone’s blood. “When Douglas was built the central spaces were explored and mapped. Where an open passage was found it was followed. That led us to the backdoor. Yes, this is a serious and unwelcome development and we will have to
find a solution.”
“So what are our options Admiral?” Gambon asked.
“Currently we are dispatching scouts. The first response has to be to find out how serious this is,” Eulenburg replied, “Once we have more information… then we consider the options - all of them.”
“How bad is this Admiral?” Reynolds asked. She had stayed relatively quiet and this was her first direct question. “I’m not asking for a political answer. I want the truth.”
Eulenburg stopped and for several second stared into space.
“Truth is relative Governor,” he eventually replied. “Truth is at best what we know today. It may be something different tomorrow. But a fundamental truth is that no fortress raised by the hand of man has ever been able to stand off an indefinite siege.”
“Then why did we even come here?” Gambon shouted.
“Do you really think we would have been better off sitting in our homes, waiting for Nameless soldiers to storm in?” Reynolds snapped back lightning fast before turning to Eulenburg. “So, Admiral, what do we do now?”
“We’re doing it. Scouts have been dispatched, we find out where they are and whether they can be rooted out.”
When he left the meeting Reynolds followed him to Four C, while the rest of the governors continued to argue, with the steadier individuals trying to calm the hysterics.
“I don’t think we can stop this getting out to the general population,” Reynolds said quietly.
“In all probability, no,” Eulenburg agreed. “I hope that by the time the rumours get started, we’ll have some good news to dilute the bad.”
Walking into Four C, the first thing he saw was Chevalier’s grim expression.
“Sir, we need to talk,” the brigadier said in a tone every bit as grim as his scarred face.
Eulenburg took the pad offered and flicked through the series of images and diagrams with the growing realisation that the situation wasn’t as serious as he had thought. It was significantly worse.
“Less than a hundred metres?” he whispered.
“From the most westerly caverns, yes,” Chevalier replied. “The only small positive is that the Nameless don’t appear to be aware of how close they are. Certainly there are soldiers present, but most of those the scouts spotted are of a previously unknown worker design, we assume another form of bio-engineered life form.”
There was something in the Brigadier’s tone.
“Tell us everything Sebastian,” he said.
“The civilian teams that originally discovered this were laying seismic instruments. We’ve gone back over their readings and the Nameless might be working towards us on the north side as well.”
“How certain?”
“None of our equipment is particularly sophisticated but the analysts are fairly certain that the Nameless are blasting their way through in at least two places, if not three.”
“How soon could they get in?” Reynolds asked.
Chevalier shrugged.
“This lot,” he tapped the tablet, “could break through within days. The others, we don’t know, nor do we have any way to estimate. If they find caverns they can use then soon, but if they are trying to tunnel through hundreds of metres of volcanic rock, then years from now.”
“Can we mount a spoiling attack?”
“We could try but I don’t advise it. We’d have to either create a passageway or leave our soldiers with no real line of retreat. Since the Nameless don’t seem to think they are about to break through imminently I recommend we let them be. Then ambush them and take as much of their diggings as possible before they react.”
“Will we have to evacuate the western caverns?”
“I think we’d have to,” Chevalier replied. “Without them, there is no depth to our positions. We’d have no room to retreat into if the worst happened. If the Nameless do break into a cavern with civilians, then we’d lose all of them. The passageways would instantly choke with thousands of people trying to escape, no one would get out. No soldier would be able to get in. It would be a massacre of unimaginable proportions.”
“Alright. I’ll make the arrangements to evacuate the affected caverns,” Eulenburg said heavily before turning to Reynolds. “I’m going to need to make an announcement to the population. We can’t hide this and there is no point even trying. Governor, may I ask you to make the necessary arrangements?”
“Of course,” she replied.
When she left Eulenburg turned back to the Brigadier.
“What are you holding back, Sebastian?”
“No information Alfred. Just an opinion.”
“Which is?”
“Douglas Base is going to fall,” Chevalier answered simply. “Even if we fend off this assault there will be others. We will end up going the same way as the Chinese. The first time the Nameless get a foothold, be it on the surface or down here, we won’t be able to force them back.”
“Do you have an alternative?”
“The backdoor is still available. Which surprises me but it does indicate that the Nameless aren’t watching as closely as they could.”
“You want me to pour nearly a million and a half people out through a passageway less than five metres wide? Then tell them to fend for themselves?” The Admiral’s voice was even and calm.
“Yes,” Chevalier replied. “You know the status of the food stocks. I know you took a lot of political heat in December when you cut the food rations to the minimum, but if you hadn’t, we would have run out by now. The same is true of really everything else.” Chevalier looked around Four C. “This place was never meant to stand off an indefinite close siege. War was supposed to either pass us by, or any siege was to have been lifted. For all the fleet’s great efforts, Kite String bought us only a few more months. There is also the fact that the Nameless lost a lot of ground troops in the bombardment because of the bombardment the fleet put in. That gives us a good opportunity to mount a breakout because the chances of success are higher now than they will be in the future.”
Eulenburg stood silent for several moments thinking.
“Sebastian, you are the marine. Can so many people hide in the uncharted regions and live off the land?”
“Fortunately it was a mild winter and spring is well underway. The forested regions will give cover and food. If people keep moving and spread out then they stand a better chance in the long term. Remember these aren’t like the population back on Earth. They are frontier people to begin with.”
“It is going to be a hard sell, Sebastian, not least because some - a lot - will be left behind. The old and the sick, they won’t be able to survive out there.” Eulenburg smiled sadly. Between them they ticked both those boxes. “Also a lot of soldiers will have to stay to hold the Nameless back.”
“It will only get harder with time, Alfred. In the end what is our duty here?”
“To save as many as we can.”
_____________________
30th August 2067
She’d had a good run, but her luck had finally run out. Barely conscious, the casualty let out a faint groan as Alice tightened the tourniquet around what remained of his left arm. In the darkness spilt field rations, blood and fragments of flesh mixed together into one black puddle. The blood, which had been spurting out with every beat of his heart, slowed to an ooze. Assuming they could move him soon he would probably last long enough to at least get him to a dressing station. One of her work party moved slightly and instantly a bullet blew a chunk out of the parapet above his head. Alice didn’t look up from the casualty as Damien swore at him. Just like the casualty, he was new to her squad, new to the surface and at the rate he was going, he wasn’t going to last long enough to get much older.
Pale skinned and used to the safety of the shelters, they really were like children, with no understanding of the dangers on the surface. The casualty - he hadn’t been in the squad long enough for her to remember his name - had assumed that because it was still dark and they were in the su
pport line of trenches there was no immediate danger. When they’d reached a shallow point in the trench, rather than crawl to stay beneath the parapet, as the more experienced members of the squad did, he merely stooped. The sniper had nailed him instantly.
When Damien took the rest of the squad forward with ammunition and food, she along with the other two newbies waited for the stretcher-bearers. It wasn’t necessary for them all to wait, but the sight of someone bleeding in the mud might mean they didn’t need stretcher-bearers themselves.
They were supposed to be back at the reserve line by the time dawn came but the orderly trenches they’d dug all those months ago were a thing of the past. Shellfire, trenches lost and new ones dug to counter enemy moves had all taken their toll on the network. As a result it was now a mess of interconnecting unmapped muddy ditches in which people could and did get lost. Sticking your head up to get your bearings was not advisable. So as the dawn touched the trench line, Alice was sitting on the fire step of the frontline trench, coffee mug in hand as her squad dropped supplies in the frontline dumps. She should probably have been helping but once they were done, they’d have to make their way back to the support line. Thanks to the casualty they would have to do so without the benefit of the cover of darkness.
“You guys still manage to get the good stuff,” she said to Rob as the two of them sat on the fire step. “Don’t know how though, ‘cos I know we aren’t bringing it.”
“Just a matter of knowing a man, Doc,” Rob replied as he lowered his own mug. He nodded towards the damp bloodstains on her pants. “That anyone I know?”
“One of my guys.”
“Oh… he’d be?”
“My first, yeah.” Alice took another gulp of coffee. “You never forget your first, or so I’m told.”
The Landfall Campaign (The Nameless War) Page 40