The Landfall Campaign (The Nameless War)

by Edmond Barrett

  Perhaps the same was happening in the other caves for on the second, or perhaps third day, a senior fleet officer came in. Baden was gone he said and then proceeded to name a number of starships that were known to be destroyed. Harbinger, the ship Alice and her group were to have embarked on, was the first name on the list.

  The announcement raised more questions than it answered but it did answer the big one. This was real. The people who had been pestering fleet personnel to know when they’d be let out now quietened down. Attitudes to the news varied from person to person. Some couldn’t believe what they had heard and seemed to work hard at convincing themselves it was all some kind of a mistake. Others, when blankets and folding beds were handed out, staked a personal space and apparently settled in for the long haul. Moving among them were fleet officers and NCOs, drawing up lists of who was in the shelter.

  Finally, five Earth days after entering the shelter, an officer came for Alice and the rest of the civilians formerly of Harbinger.

  “Right, you lot are heading for the surface,” he said briskly. “There you will report to the Marine command post and make yourselves available to a Major Hillaby.”

  “To what purpose, Lieutenant?” Professor Bhaile asked, indignant at the Lieutenant’s tone. “We’re not marines.”

  The Lieutenant glanced up from his computer pad at the professor’s fairly portly figure.

  “No, you’re not Mister…”

  “Professor, thank you.”

  “Professor Bhaile, the marines might have a can do attitude, but they don’t attempt the impossible. We know you’re not marines but they need people for non-combat duties. Heaving and hauling mostly.”

  “B-but-but that’s not what we’re here for!” Bhaile spluttered. “We are civilian experts in first contact procedure and alien language! We’re not general labourers!” Alice and several others joined the indignant clamour.

  “You all signed contract 266B, fixed term employment of civilian contractor on Battle Fleet ship, space-borne installation or off world ground base.” The officer raised his voice to be heard over their objections. “Point fifteen of the contract states that in the event of war, such individuals may, at the discretion of the officer commanding, be appointed to any non-combat task they can reasonably be expected to complete. This will constitute the norm until such time as hostilities end or that person can be repatriated to Earth, regardless of the length of time outstanding on the contract. Repatriation to Earth is entirely secondary to fleet operational priorities. An individual who refuses to obey lawful orders may, at the discretion of the officer commanding, be confined until end of hostilities or their repatriation to Earth.” The Lieutenant didn’t read it all from his computer and instead recited it from memory in the singsong voice of someone who’d already made the same announcement many times. They’d all gone silent in the face of this assault of terms and conditions. For her part Alice was becoming aware of a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She could remember reading point fifteen before she signed the contract. She’d hesitated but then decided it would never come into effect and put her name on the dotted line. Given the opportunity by their silence, the Lieutenant added a footnote.

  “Admiral Eulenburg has already stated he will place in the guardhouse any individual who has signed a 266B and refuses to obey instructions. I also feel I should inform you that the guardhouse in Douglas Base is located on the surface and is not hardened against weapon strikes. You are in essence being drafted. Now, the only question is, are you going to obey instructions?”

  It was a sullen group of draftees that two hours later stood in front of Major Hillaby. En route to the surface they had been issued with jackets, boots and, more ominously, helmets. They had been joined by a number of other groups of equally upset looking civilians. There were now somewhere between thirty and forty people, all clustered in front of the boxes and weatherproof sheeting that served as the Major’s office. Looking around at the people surrounding her, Alice could see some defiance, some anger, but mostly fear in their faces.

  “Sergeant!” the Major bellowed, making everyone jump.

  “Sir?” the NCO replied, pushing through the crowd.

  “Sergeant, I was promised a hundred,” he snapped waving his hand vaguely towards them all. “This does not look like a hundred people.”

  “Yes sir,” the sergeant replied in a calm voice. “Them downstairs are having trouble finding the right people. People were thrown willy-nilly into shelters. These are the ones they’ve found so far.”

  “Wonderful. Just wonderful!”

  “They are starting to ask for volunteers from general population, sir. They reckon they will have another fifty up here in about an hour,” the sergeant continued in the same calm voice.

  The Major glared at him for a moment, his fingers drumming furiously on his desk. “Alright Cecil,” he replied eventually with a sigh. “Split them in half and send them east and west. North and South will have to wait their turn.”

  “Yes sir.” the sergeant turned and started to roughly shove people into two clusters. Alice standing on the extreme left of her group was shoved one way, as the rest of them were pushed the other.

  “But…” she objected stepping forward.

  “Damn it woman!” the Major shouted at her. “Would you stay where you’re put! You’re only being put into today’s work party, not separated for life!”

  On the other side of widening gap between the two subgroups, Leah gave an encouraging smile before being bundled into a truck.

  As she sat on the truck’s hard bench, Alice was struck by a terrible sense of loneliness. Ever since she’d first been contracted to the fleet, she’d spent almost every moment, awake or asleep, in or around the same group of people. They’d gone through the same basic training course together, and on board Harbinger the civilians had kept mostly to themselves. She didn’t know them all equally. Leah she’d known from university and Professor Bhaile was generally benign and banal. Others, like Steward Gore the diplomat, she hardly knew at all, plus there was Malcolm the geologist, a man convinced of his own greatness, that she tried to avoid. But they were all familiar faces. Their leave on Landfall had been the first time in months that she hadn’t been within a few metres of at least half of them. As they all returned for their flight back to Harbinger, she’d been glad to see them. Now she was on her own, surrounded by strangers.

  They got to the edge of the plateau and turned off road before coming to a halt. Jumping out of the truck, the first thing Alice saw was a machine digging out a deep narrow hole.

  “We’re digging graves?” she blurted before she could stop herself. The closest marine heard her.

  “Not just yet luv,” he replied. “Trench digging - graves for the living. Hey Rob, give Happy here a spade.”

  “Right’o Corp,” another marine replied. He hesitated as he passed her a shovel. “Hello Doc,” he said to her after a moment. “Glad to see you hadn’t got to Baden when it all went runny.”

  It took a moment for her to place him. It was the marine who’d been on guard duty when she’d come back to the base on the last day of her leave.

  “Yes, we were about to take off when… this all happened.” She hesitated before memory threw up another note. “I’m sorry about the ones in your unit that were on Harbinger.”

  “Yeah, poor bastards,” he replied shortly.

  “Rob! Would you stop chatting yer woman up and get a move on!” the corporal called out.

  “Yes Corp,” Rob replied. Alice thought there was a slight colour in his cheeks when he pushed the shovel into her hand.

  After her first gaff Alice didn’t speak much for the rest of the day, although the work didn’t leave her with much breath with which to talk anyway. The specialist digging machine was doing the lion’s share of the task. It dug out a two metre wide by two metre deep groove in the earth, grinding its way through both soil and tree roots with equal ease. It didn’t dig one continuous trench however
. Every ten metres it would stop, lift its cutting head and move a few metres to the left or right before recommencing. A mix of civilians and marines were left to dig the connecting passages between these grooves.

  After spending the morning as one of those guarding the workers, Rob swapped duties with a marine who’d been digging. Somehow he managed to find his way over to work beside Alice and once there, seemed to view it as his role to give her an elementary education in fieldworks. The reason the digger wasn’t doing one long trench, he informed her, was due to high explosive. By breaking the trench line into short lengths or bays, connected at right angles by short passages called traverses, the effect of an explosive bursting in the trench would be limited to one bay. It would also prevent an enemy who entered the trench from firing down the entire length. Traverses weren’t their only work: the sides had to be shored up, plus a firing step and parapet built.

  They prepared just over a kilometre of trenches that first day, and it took absolutely all of Landfall’s extended day. As the sun dipped towards the horizon, Alice leaned on her shovel and looked back along their handiwork. She was bone tired and her hands, shoulders and back were all aching from the unaccustomed labour. Several of the civilians had been forced to drop out of the work during the course of the day but she’d made it to the end of Landfall’s extended working day. That felt good. In a small way.

  “A good day’s work,” she said to Rob.

  “Yep,” he replied. His uniform was muddy but he looked much fresher than she felt. “Of course the total perimeter is going to be, oh… about twenty K.”

  Alice closed her eyes and dropped her head until her forehead rested on the top of the spade handle.

  “You really couldn’t have just kept that one to yourself?”

  “Should have been obvious to a bright spark like you,” he replied disapprovingly. “Of course after that, we then have to dig the inner loop of the support trench plus the communication trenches that link the two, plus the bunkers and dug outs that will be needed. Finally, we’ll have cut down God only knows how many acres of trees to clear firing lanes.”

  “You know, I am getting really tired of this,” she said with feeling. “I am not a soldier and I’m not about to become a soldier. I don’t need to know all this stuff. When this is over, I’m going back to Earth!”

  “If it’s still there, Doc,” Rob replied as he picked up his rifle and shouldered the spade. “Only if it’s still there.”

  Alice hurried after him.

  “What do you mean by that?” she demanded as she drew level.

  “Just what do you think has happened Doc?” he replied evenly.

  “I’ve listened to the reports that have been released.”

  “Yeah well, I’ve listened harder,” he replied. “The Third Fleet didn’t make an orderly retreat Doc. It routed. That means it ran for its life. Every man for himself type of thing. They reckon the Nameless fleet is now moving towards Earth.”

  “But the Home Fleet…” she said quietly.

  “The fleet here, it didn’t even slow them down. There’s nothing magic about the Home Fleet, no guarantee that it will succeed and if Earth falls,” he waved back towards the trenches, “well, all this won’t make any difference.”

  “You’re saying this is pointless? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “We’re awaiting developments, Doc. If Earth falls they’ll sweep us up in due course. If Earth stands, then we still have a chance. But unless the Home Fleet gives ‘em the mother and father of all spankings, we’re going to be a long way behind enemy lines. Now if we’re really lucky, they’ll see this as a sideshow and ignore us. If less lucky, they want the planet but they want it in working order. That means a siege, which means they’ll have to come down here and root us out the hard way. If we’re flat out unlucky they’ll see this place as a weakness in their support areas and as they don’t give a rat’s ass about the planet, then we’re back to being royally boned. They’ll lob enough nukes at us to saturate the defences or if they want to do it in style, simply bolt an engine onto an asteroid and use it as a planet cracker.”

  His voice never altered in tone all through his monologue. If anything he sounded slightly bored.

  “Is that really what you believe?”

  “I ain’t selling a religion here Doc. Belief don’t come into it. I’m talking military probability.” They reached the truck while he was speaking. The other civilians were already in and waiting impatiently.

  “Be seeing you, Doc,” Rob said as he helped her up into the truck. “Just keep your wits about you.”

  She was reunited with the rest of the Harbinger crowd back within the base proper. For the night they were sent back to the civilian accommodation they’d vacated days earlier, in anticipation of their return to Harbinger. There wasn’t much conversation, people just wanted to eat and sleep. But Alice and Leah stayed awake long enough to talk for a while.

  It seemed that Leah hadn’t spoken to any member of the military. Whoever it was she’d talked to, had seemed to take a far more upbeat view of things. According to this unknown individual the trenches and fortifications were a precaution. They were a distraction to keep people busy and things would soon be back to normal. After her conversation with Rob, Alice found such a view naive. But Leah was happier than she had been in days. It was a terrible thought to have in relation to a friend but as the conversation went on, it struck Alice that Leah wasn’t good at handling harsh truths. But she didn’t say anything to shatter her friend’s illusions. It wouldn’t have been fair to do so. As Rob had put it, they were awaiting developments.

  ___________________________

  9th August 2066

  Message start: ++ To Commander Ground Base Douglas - On First August Home Fleet engaged two enemy fleets in the region of Alpha Centauri - Enemy advance checked - Enemy sighted retreating back along supply lines - Estimate they will not retreat as far as Landfall - Intelligence indicates Nameless jump drives are, repeat are, subject to constraints by mass shadow - to what extent though unknown - Report any sightings ++ Message End. Coding: G FIFTY-ONE, CORRECT. Frequency: CORRECT. Authorisation code: CORRECT. Conclusion: MESSAGE CONFIRMED AUTHENTIC.

  Eulenburg blew across his coffee as he considered the message. It was a real mixture of the good and the bad but at least they’d finally remembered Landfall back on Earth. Rumours of the worst kind had started to circulate and at least those could now be laid to rest. The lack of detail was maddening but the limitations of FTL transmitters, plus the security implications, meant he wasn’t surprised Headquarters wasn’t going into fine detail. Still if the Nameless couldn’t drop back into real space directly in orbit around Landfall, that at least removed one nightmare scenario. But the crisis was by no means over. There was no mention of any sort of relief force coming to Landfall. The fact that it was a week after the end of the battle before the transmission had been sent, very clearly indicated that Landfall was not high on the fleet’s priority list.

  Still their window of maximum vulnerability had been closed. The evacuation to the shelters had been completed a week ago now, although there were still plenty of people out among colonies, working to bring to the shelters whatever might be useful, anything from military equipment to food. Douglas Base was now almost unrecognisable. On the surface, trench works snaked around the perimeter, while below ground, caverns that hadn’t seen a human being since they were converted to shelters years earlier, were now teeming with one point two million people.

  As an exercise in logistics, the evacuation had been an outstanding success. While the early days had been characterised by ragged confusion, the whole process had got into gear quicker than Eulenburg had hoped. Still, although he’d barely had time to blink, the time had dragged painfully.

  At the end of that first day he’d reviewed the data from Valkyrie. Every night since, he’d dreamed of Nameless ships blinking into existence above them and missiles raining down.

  But in the wakin
g world the Nameless had not come. Not yet anyway. Sky watch had observed some kind of activity in orbit around the fourth planet of the solar system. L4, a relatively small gas giant that orbited around the system’s sun two light hours further out than Landfall. Whether this was any…

  The buzz of the intercom on his belt interrupted his thoughts.

  “Eulenburg here.”

  “Admiral sir,” Lieutenant Casta’s voice came through. “Just to remind you, you’re due to meet the combined forces commanders in fifteen minutes.”

  Eulenburg looked slowly around his office. It felt comfortable in here, making it possible to forget that the base beyond was teeming with refugees and defended by soldiers speaking a dozen different languages. It was safe in here, far removed from the dangers and demands that were just beyond the office door.

  “Sir? Sir, are you still there?”

  “Yes Lieutenant, I’m still here. I’ll be there shortly.”