“Anyone I know?”
“A new guy,” she replied shaking her head. “It’s always a new guy. This one was with us for all of… six hours. Sniper.”
“Yeah, bloody infiltrators,” Rob said. “They send out a dozen every night. Most nights we get all of them before they reach our frontline. But they keep sending them.”
“You missed one tonight,” Alice observed.
“Yeah, we’ll have to flush it out. That might cost us a couple of guys,” Rob said, before pausing to take a mouthful of coffee. “I’ll tell you this Doc. I still can’t get used to these things. None of those snipers ever gets back. If they last long enough to exhaust their ammo, they charge. They don’t even try to get back. They have no survival inst…”
He paused and looked up into the murky sky, Alice heard it to.
“Bouncer!” Rob bellowed down the trench as both of them sprang to their feet. One of Alice’s squad, one of the newbies, was standing nearby and he looked around puzzled. Alice glanced up, just long enough to see something tumbling through the air towards them. Everyone who saw it realised it was going to land in the bay. Lunging for the traverse, Alice grabbed the newbie’s arm and dragged him after her. As they rounded the corner she heard a soft thump as it landed behind them, then a deafening bang. Alice hit the trench wall hard.
_____________________
The column of refugees was quiet and well ordered, their eyes downcast and their clothing worn, clutching the few personal belonging they’d been able to bring to Douglas. Marines were stationed along the passageway but it looked like their presence wasn’t necessary, as everyone was keeping to the left, leaving the right hand side clear for military personnel. As he made his way along the passageway Eulenburg reflected that in some ways he would have preferred a bit of anger. It would have shown life. Trudging along with their heads down, these people had the look of cattle, meekly awaiting the arrival of the slaughter man. Could they really be sent out into the wilds? He’d allowed the evacuation to be a slow affair to avoid any panic and to give the other caverns a chance to reorganise.
As the civilians vacated the space, work parties cleared the area, changing the shelter into a killing ground. The squad sergeant noticed him as he approached and alerted his officer with a discrete cough.
“Sir,” the lieutenant said saluting sharply but a little awkwardly. The young officer was in one of the first of the modified armoured suits on which all the frontal armour had been reinforced. This increased protection would be at the expense of mobility, but when the fighting began, it would be all about brutal short-range fire fights and the defenders would need to be able to stand and trade punches. Two of the soldiers were carrying locally manufactured plasma guns - another Douglas Base innovation. It had always been said that plasma weapons couldn’t work inside a planetary atmosphere because the bolt would almost immediately lose coherency. But a civilian engineer had come up with a way for it to hold together for nearly thirty-five metres before the magnetic field failed, sending searing plasma over everyone and everything within reach. The device was in breach of any number of weapons treaties, but it was one of their few aces.
“Are you ready?”
“I wouldn’t say no to more time, sir, but we’re ready. We have stone bunkers for the machineguns and walls to cover the firing positions for the rest. On their side it’s as smooth as a bowling lane with not a square inch of cover,” the lieutenant replied as he glanced toward the wall, “If they come through there and they don’t know we’re waiting for them, then it will be a massacre. We’ll butcher them, then the assault force will move forward. If they do know, well then they’re going to run into a brick wall.”
There was only one very primitive and very carefully disguised motion sensor on the far side of the wall. On the human side there was a small red light set into the stone. A micro fine wire had been run through to avoid any signal that might be detected. Each flicker of the light was an indication of movement.
“Respectfully sir, I don’t think you should be here,” the young man added. “They could come through here any time now.”
Eulenburg looked at the wall.
“This will be the frontline very soon,” he said to no one in particular.
_____________________
“Alice? Alice, can you hear me?” someone was gently patting her face. She took a muzzy swipe as her eyes opened. Rob and Damien were both leaning over her. They were inside one of the frontline’s dugouts.
“Doc, you okay?” Rob asked.
Before she could reply there was another explosion nearby and all three of them were showered with dirt. As the dust settled she levered herself up onto her elbows and looked around blinking as she tried to gather her thoughts. There were a lot of people in the dugout, mostly the marines but in the gloom she could make out a few of her own people.
“Am I bleeding?” she croaked.
“Don’t think so, Doc,” Rob replied.
“Then I must be fine,” she grunted trying to roll onto her feet. “Anyone else bleeding?” she asked.
“Another one of our new guys, Alice,” Damien said gently pushing back down. “Shrapnel in his arse. He’ll live but he isn’t going to be sitting down for a while, which is what you should be doing. You were out cold and I’d be stunned if you don’t have at least a mild concussion.” Damien glanced at Rob and smiled slightly, “We’re both bigger than you so I’m pretty sure we can make you.”
Alice’s profanity was blotted out as something exploded over them. Dust streamed down from the ceiling.
_____________________
When the flicker of the little red light slowed, then stopped, most of the lights in the cavern were switched off for the first time in months. The marines waited silently in the darkness, each man and woman alone with their own thoughts. An hour, then another crept past with no movement. Then the little red light started to flicker again.
“For fuck’s sake,” someone muttered and every one of them heard it.
“Do they need some help over there?”
“What? You got something better to do?”
“Yeah, hot date.”
“Christ, some chick is scraping the bottom of the barrel.”
“Who says it’s a chick.”
“Screw you all!”
The explosion was deafening. Bits of rock flew into the cavern and dust billowed inwards blotting out everything. No order was given as every marine present hunkered down, their eyes glued to the sights of their weapons, waiting.
The dust began to settle, revealing a breach into the heart of Douglas large enough to drive a truck through. From beyond it came a light, wobbling as if it was being carried. Then a creature stepped through - straight into a hail of small arms fire.
“Sir, they’re in,” Gillum reported without pause as he dashed into the office.
“The Brigadier?” Eulenburg asked as he jumped to his feet.
“In the command centre, sir.”
Chevalier was watching a bank of monitors impassively as Eulenburg hurried in.
“Sebastian?”
“Better than I dared hope,” Chevalier replied to the unasked question. “It was mostly miners and a handful of soldiers. They were destroyed almost immediately. The assault teams are now advancing into the enemy positions.” He gestured towards the monitors, each of which was displaying feed from an individual marines’ helmet camera. “They’ve run into only light opposition so far. Most of the enemy seem to be worker constructs with little combat capability. We’ve destroyed a lot of those and taken a number of large pieces of mining equipment.” One of the screens whited out for several seconds. “And the new plasma guns are proving very useful.”
“When is far, far enough?” Eulenburg asked as another screen whited out for a moment and a little tiny ‘got ‘im!’ came from one of the speakers. “We know so little about the wider caverns…”
“When they run into any kind of significant opposition, then it is time to stop and retreat to t
he most defensible point behind them. Which means a choke point. They’d passed through several already,” Chevalier replied without taking his eyes off the screen. “Resistance is certainly beginning to stiffen.”
On the screens a major firefight had erupted. One of them went blank and another was showing a static close-up of the floor. Then abruptly all the screens went blank.
“Sebastian, what is happen…” Eulenburg started to say.
“Jamming, it must be jamm…” Chevalier began rising from his seat, just as the floor started to shake.
_____________________
Alice’s head spun when she sat up sharply but this time neither Rob nor Damien tried to stop her. They’d felt it too - a shaking that was nothing like ordinary shellfire. Alice was last out of the dugout. Outside everyone had felt it. People were looking around and a few even risked sticking their heads above the parapets to see beyond.
“Earthquake?” someone shouted.
“Can’t be,” Damien called out. “Whole area is…”
“War! Look at War,” Rob shouted, pointing at the small hillock, for months the site of one of the plateau’s laser batteries.
Alice spun round to look. It was perhaps two hundred metres from the section of the line in which she stood so she could see clearly as the whole side of the hillock begin to slide away. as the landslide gathered pace. She watched dumbfounded as the battery crew abandoned their equipment and the whole huge machine tilted and then tumbled down the mountainside. More and more of the mountain was collapsing, prompting soldiers to climb out of their trenches and run for their lives. Many weren’t quick enough and were swept away. Stepping onto the parapet Alice looked as the landslide thundered downwards and through the Nameless positions below.
“Oh Christ,” muttered Damien, “Oh Christ, Oh Christ, Oh Christ.”
“Now what do we do?” Alice asked Rob quietly as the shaking stopped.
“I don’t know Doc, I really don’t know,” he said in a bewildered voice.
_____________________
Four C was in a state of uproar the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the first Nameless assaults. Eulenburg heard none of it as he instead stared aghast at the main display in Four C. For six months it had shown a red line circling the plateau just where it began to slope down the mountainside. Now that red line was broken. He had been desperate to believe that it was some kind of massive equipment failure but the camera and reports from the surface told the same story. Over a kilometre of the frontline and several big chunks of the second line simply weren’t there any more.
“We need to… We need…” he started to say before coming to a halt.
“The assault force is gone,” Chevalier said from behind him, “all seventy of them. The troops at the breach report the whole thing has caved in.”
“What happened?” Eulenburg asked without turning.
“I don’t know.”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW!” he spun and shouted into Chevalier’s face.
“I don’t know what happened, Alfred. I just don’t know.” Chevalier looked at the main display, “and right now it is not even important. We have to seal up that hole in the front!”
Eulenburg glared at him for a moment then strode away.
“Order all the units surrounding the breach to move in, dig in wherever they can. The formations beyond them are to extend their frontage to maintain contact. Just get troops across that gap!”
_____________________
“Listen up!” the Company Commander shouted, “We have been tasked with moving into, and digging into, that gap in the line. Grab all available ammunition and entrenching equipment. We move in five minutes!”
As he passed Alice grabbed his sleeve. “What about us? Seventeenth work party, Corporal Peats.”
The officer gave her a blank look for moment, “You’re coming with us. We’ll need a few extra hands on deck.”
“Cheers,” muttered one of her squad. “Really seriously, cheers.”
Damien said nothing but looked equally unenthusiastic.
“It wasn’t as if we weren’t going to get roped in,” Alice said matter of factly as she pushed them after the marines.
The Nameless must have been as surprised by the landslide as the defenders were because for the first hour there was no response. The defenders swarmed frantically over the breach trying to repair the damage. But the landslide hadn’t left them with any soil to dig into. Soon Nameless missiles started to arc down on them, while below armour and infantry began to mass, then advance. The defenders had only managed to dig a few foxholes and were driven back into their support lines.
Alice cursed beneath her breath as she tried to loosen the straps that held the marine in his armour but her fingers couldn’t get any purchase. All the while bright red blood pulsed out through the hole where his breastplate had failed to protect him but now stopped her from getting at the wound. Further down the shallow trench a machine-gunner let off a long burst. Yanking loose the casualty’s bayonet, Alice sawed her way through the offending strap. It was too late though. It had probably been too late from the moment he was hit.
“Can we go now?” the last remaining member of her squad whined. The rest of them along with Damien were making their way back to the support line, along with a good chunk of Rob’s squad.
“Only when we’ve got someone to carry out of here,” she snapped back at him. “Now either grow a pair or shut up!”
“Armour!” someone shouted. “We have incoming armour. Bring up the gun! Bring up the gun!”
A pair of marines came running down the support trench with a heavy weapon and set it up on the parapet.
“Clear!” one of them shouted before firing. Somewhere beyond there was an explosion. “Reload, reload!” the gunner shouted as he sighted his weapon on a second target. Then abruptly Alice found herself flat on her back with her ears ringing. Levering herself up on her elbows she blinked to clear her eyes and looked towards the heavy weapons team. They were gone. So was the entire section of the trench they’d been in. Debris was still landing and not another living soul was in sight. There was a smell of explosives and blood,
Then something clanked into view, an armoured vehicle clambered over the parapet, half collapsing what was left of the trench section the gun team had occupied. The turret whined as it rotated away from her, followed by a bang as it fired at something out of sight. Without taking her eyes off the war machine she wriggled backwards. As she reached the traverse a pair of centaurs dropped into the trench and looked straight at her. Alice rolled into the traverse as heavy bullets thudded into the space she’d just occupied. Scrambling onto her feet she ran for her life. Behind her she could hear the thump of heavy feet; there was no way in hell she could hope to outrun them. Not that she wasn’t going to try.
Her lungs burning she ran through to two bays without encountering anything other than bodies.
“Get down!”
As she hit the dirt, there was a sustained burst of gunfire over her head. Behind her came the long drawn out screams of dying centaurs.
“Jesus, Doc, what the hell are you still doing here?” Rob asked as Alice raised her head.
“Trying not to die,” she replied as she started to rise, then abruptly her arms gave way and she flopped back down. It had been an exhausting day and it was finally catching up with her. Rob grabbed her by the arm and heaved her back onto her feet, while another marine covered the direction she’d come from.
“Why are you still here?” she muttered as she tried to get her feet to move.
“We’ve lost the communication trench. We’re looking to see if we could reach the next one. I take it that’s a no.”
“No one left alive in that direction.”
“Sarge, what are we going to do?” the other marine asked.
Rob hesitated.
“Fall back to the rest of the squad, time to move to Plan B.”
“What’s that Sarge?”
“Ask me again in five minutes.”
_____________________
“The only reason we haven’t lost the plateau completely is because they are feeding in troops piecemeal is,” Chevalier said sombrely. “Our troops have had to fall back to our support lines, which unfortunately means that they are too far from the rim of the plateau to gain the benefit of the killing zone we cleared. The landslide has badly broken up the ground but they have managed to get a number of armoured vehicles up.”
“What about our reserves Admiral? Can they not be used?” Reynolds asked.
Eulenburg looked back at the holo, on which the red claw continued to creep slowly inwards.
“Admiral?”
“The reserves are committed Governor. I have none left to send,” Eulenburg replied heavily.
“But the troops the convoy landed…”
“As far as I know, we have already lost the equivalent of an entire battalion today,” Eulenburg said with a shake of his head. “I would guess that by the end of the day we will have less soldiers than we did before Kite String.”
“My God.”
“We may need God’s help by the end of the day,” Eulenburg replied.
“We’re going to have to pull units off other parts of the line and feed them in as fast as we can,” Chevalier said. I’ve already got the troops who were in the shelter where they broke in moving upwards.”
“That won’t be enough.”
“Sir,” called out a communication rating, “report from our armoured unit. Major Hassett reports she’s down to two tanks and one infantry fighting vehicle. She can make no forward progress.”
“Sebastian, based on your training and experience, do you believe we can drive them off the plateau?”
Chevalier stared at the main display.
“No,” he said after a moment. “Even if we could take the top of the landslide, we couldn’t hold it. The best we can now do is to establish a new perimeter.”
Eulenburg strode over to the edge of the command
The Landfall Campaign (The Nameless War) Page 41