The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) (24 page)

She brushed angrily at her eyes. He was silent for a moment then smiled slightly.

“It never crossed my mind,” Dautsch said finally, “that you’ve been out here with no contact with anyone else.”

“What do you mean?”

In her chest she could feel her heart begin to accelerate again.

“We’re not it. We are definitely not it. The Americans broke out from their shelter, although with how many we don’t know. But more importantly we’ve received transmissions from space. Courier ships have been making periodic passes through the system. We’ve received their transmissions but haven’t been able to respond – yet.  Earth was attacked and they threw back the assault. Earth still stands. The rest of the human race is still out there.”

Alice felt her legs fold as she flopped down. The colonel stepped forward and she felt a water bottle being pressed into her hand. That Earth, and everyone and everything she loved was gone, was the faceless dread she’d lived with all these months. With those few casual words, the emotions she’d bottled up for so long just overflowed. 

“I’m sorry, it never occurred to me that you didn’t... couldn’t know the wider situation,” he said, as she composed herself.

“It doesn’t change anything,” she said through gritted teeth.

“It changes everything,” he replied as he sat down beside her. “It means there’s light at the end of the tunnel. A small, weak light certainly, but it’s there. You’ve kept your people alive and I’ve done the same for mine. And I’ve done it by not throwing their lives away on pointless military actions.”

“So what’s your plan, Colonel?”

“First and foremost, we stay on the board – hurt the Nameless where we can and keep our heads down where we can’t. There will be a liberation and I want us to live to see it.”

Chapter Eleven

Hell’s Mouth

My name is Mateusz Bielski. I am... rather I was, a citizen of the independent colony of Junction Station. I remember it started with a birthday...

Junction Station
27th July 2066

“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Brand! Happy birthday to you!”

On the control deck of Junction Station, everyone cheered as Brand managed to blow out all twenty-one candles out in one try. Bielski even saw a smile on the face of Approach Controller Caple, as he put away the fire extinguisher he’d been holding. He’d disapproved of having naked flames on the Control Deck,

“Thank you everyone,” Brand said. “Consider this the warm-up for the main event. My place, twenty hundred hours, we’ll rattle this tin can!”

There was another cheer from the younger individuals and grimaces from a few of the older ones. Brand’s parties could get famously wild, which had got him up in front of the disciplinary board a couple of times. Brand winked at Caple.

“Alright,” Bielski called out, brandishing a knife, “everyone come and get their piece of birthday cake. Then I think Controller Caple would like his deck back.”

The little celebration had been arranged at the change of the shift so that the most possible people could be present. Brand had the evening off, but the rest of his watch would be back on duty during the party. Not that Bielski minded. He was getting a bit old for that kind of thing. As he walked back towards his cabins, two children chasing a third galloped past, shouting at each other.

“Be careful!” he called after them.

Caught up in their own game they probably didn’t even hear him. Children definitely livened up the place and always depressed Bielski a little.

The cabin was silent when he entered. He checked the small kitchen area and found a note on the screen there reading: ‘
problem in dock – back soon.
’ Their monthly supply ship had arrived yesterday and he could remember Nastya saying at dinner that they were having real problems getting everything aboard. Bielski put together a plate of salad and sat down in the living area.

In its fifteen years of existence, Junction Station had grown at an amazing rate. It had prospered and grown – perhaps too much so – despite all the predictions that it would be yet another failed independent space colony. With the discovery and settlement of Landfall, Junction Station offered the cheapest place for commercial and government ships to refuel en route to and from the colony. The charges for fuel and the traffic, both of supplies and people, had allowed them to continue to expand. But there were limits to the underlying infrastructure and either Junction would have to expand the colony at vast expense or stop accepting new applicants to join.

The Council was still debating the matter, but the question had split the population of Junction into two camps: those who saw it as a commercial enterprise and those who saw it as a new society. The debate had remained good-humoured, which was a relief to Bielski. He and Nastya had been in the first wave. They’d put everything they owned into it and left Earth with warnings ringing in their ears from friends and family that they’d be back with little more than the clothes they were standing in.

The two of them had wanted to be a part of a new and better society. But somehow Bielski felt it hadn’t lived up to their hopes. Junction Station wasn’t bad, but the high ideals had been compromised by day-to-day needs. Which made him wonder whether without those, it was really worth staying on what amounted to a floating tin can? He’d have to talk to Nastya again. They could cash in their stake here and use it to buy into a colony on Landfall. It would be odd to live with nothing but the sky over their heads again, with nothing but... Bielski drifted off to sleep without completing the thought.

He woke with a start when the alarm on his watch bleeped. There was a blanket over him and the bedroom door was closed – Nastya had obviously come back in. Glancing at his watch, Bielski swore and wrestled the blanket out of the way.

As he made his way back up to the control deck, he could hear music coming from the direction of Brand’s cabins, where the party was clearly getting underway. By comparison, the control deck was a temple of serenity and would probably stay that way. Nothing was scheduled to arrive at the station, so the only flight control tasks due during the watch were from the station’s two hydrogen skimmers.

“Hey Mateusz, I think we have a tech issue.”

Bielski looked up from the book he’d been reading at his assistant Michelle.

“Oh?” he replied.

Looking past her towards the display, he saw a collection of blips.

“Where did they come from?”

“That’s the problem,” she replied, as he got up and went over to the main plotting table. “They appeared on the plot about five minutes ago.”

The blips indicated several ships in close formation. With Junction Station positioned within the planet’s rings, they had no direct line of sight and instead relied on a series of satellites to bounce the signal through the rings to the station. Mostly it worked but not this time. The contacts were well inside the Red Line – the satellite’s radar should have picked them up hours ago.

“No transponders either?”

“Nope,” Michelle replied. “So we’ve either got a satellite on the blink or another software problem.”

“Alright, call them up,” Bielski said.

He listened as Michelle hailed the approaching ships. With the signal having to bounce through half a dozen separate satellites, there was always a lag but five minutes passed without reply. Michelle hailed a second time was again met with silence. The two of them started running system diagnostics, but the link checked out. When the original radar satellite orbited out of position to be replaced by another, they tried again but still there was silence.

Bielski looked uneasily at the plot. Battle Fleet ships were the only ones that normally travelled in groups. Junction’s civilian grade radar usually didn’t pick their warships up until after they’d crossed the Red Line, but as arrogant as the fleet could be, it was also a stickler for proper approach procedures.

“Launch a camera drone, Michelle,” he ordered.

“You sure? From here it won’t have the reaction mass to get back.”

“Yes. I want to see them properly.”

It took the drone three quarters of an hour to navigate directly up and out of the rings.

“Michelle,” Bielski said very quietly as the feed from the drone came up on the screen, “better get the Boss up here.”

With the entire Council gathered on the command deck, space was tight. A couple of them had been at the party, a few were asleep and the rest had been pulled away from various other duties. Michelle had made the excuse that it was something to do with the party getting out of control, which was good thinking – so far no one outside the room knew what was approaching.

Alex Gibbons, founder of Junction and a bear of a man, stared hard at the screen.

“No reply at all, you say?” he asked.

Bielski shook his head.

“They don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen.”

“I have,” Michelle said.

She’d been searching on the computer for a few minutes and was now looking physically sick. She passed over a computer pad to Gibbons. Bielski looked over his shoulder at it and felt his blood freeze. It was a poor quality image of a starship from one of the news feeds. The headline under the image read MISSISSIPPI INCIDENT – FLEET SHIP ATTACKED. The ship in the image wasn’t quite the same as the ones approaching, but the design commonality was unmistakeable.

“How long until they get here?” Gibbons asked.

“Four to six hours,” Bielski replied. “Not very long.”

“Two .22 pistols with twenty-four rounds each, twelve electrical stunners, twelve batons and six stab proof vests,” Gibbons summed up their armoury.

“We have a few blasting charges,” offered Jesse, his deputy.

“That would blow open any section of the station they were used in. So armed resistance isn’t an option and it might not be necessary,” Gibbons replied. “Let’s not go off at half-cock. We don’t know they’re here for any hostile reason.”

“Well, I doubt they’re here for tea and biscuits,” Caple said sharply.

“No, probably not,” Gibbons agreed. “However, I think there are only a couple of things we can do. I’ll go out there in a shuttle – try to meet them before they come into the rings and attempt to open a dialogue.”

“Jesus, Alex!” Jesse exclaimed.

“Like I said, just because they shot at that fleet ship doesn’t mean they’re hostile. Mistakes happen. But hey, if anyone has got a better idea, I’m all ears.”

“So what do the rest of us do? Sit and wait?” Caple asked.

“No you don’t,” Gibbons said. “Call up the harvesters and get as many people onto them as they’ll support. They can’t run, but they can hide in the rings. Oh, and launch message drones to Earth.”

“How many?” Caple asked.

“All of ‘em. We need help and we need it yesterday.”

No one bothered to point out that it would take the drones’ days to get to Earth.

In the early days there had been a suggestion that Battle Fleet might station a small number of ships at Junction. Gibbon had vetoed the idea. A permanent military presence would make Junction a valid target he’d said, but as Bielski observed Gibbon’s shuttle climb away, he was struck by just how alone they were. The closest of the harvesters was an hour away, while the other one was on the far side of the planet Phyose. Even if it stayed out of the rings for as long as possible, it couldn’t reach the station before evening and when it did, it would be a sitting duck.

“Mateusz, Mateusz, MATEUSZ!” Bielski jumped as Caple slapped the top of the console in front of him. “Wake up! Get down to the unloading dock, we’ll have to load up as fast as we can.”

“How do I decide who goes on?”

“Just do your best,” Caple snapped, turning away but not so fast that Bielski didn’t see the tears in his eyes.

As the shuttle exited the surface of the rings, Alex began transmitting his greeting. Back on Junction, Caple must have decided to put it onto the station’s main intercom. At first he spoke in the most formal terms. Welcome to Junction, we are the human race. Still the alien ships came on silently. The range dropped and as it did, they all heard something none of them had ever heard in his voice before – desperation. He asked again and again for them to respond.

“This is an unarmed facility. Please, we beg you to do us no harm!”

They were the last words anyone heard him speak. Junction’s radar barely registered the missile launch – Gibbon didn’t get a chance to even scream before it struck.

“Damn it Gordon! Just close the airlock. You’ve got to move!” Bielski demanded.

“Screw you!” Gordon shouted into Bielski’s face, “I’m not going without my wife!”

“The life support is already overloaded! It can’t take more… God damn it!”

Bielski grabbed Gordon’s wife and shoved her forward. That got Gordon out of the way and he slammed the airlock hatch closed. Behind, the pumps started to cycle.

As he reached the centrifuge entrance, Bielski met his neighbour coming the other way, leading his wife and two children. All of them wore survival suits.

“Russell.”

“Mateusz.”

Russell looked almost embarrassed.

“We will hide down on the storage levels,” he said. “If they board, they may not find us – the wife’s idea.”

Bielski smiled awkwardly and clapped him on the arm, “If the worst happens’ my friend, God willing you’ll see this out. Head for C Compartment – it’s the fullest at the moment.”

Inside the centrifuge and the accommodation decks, panic was spreading like a disease. Bielski had to push his way through people who were crying and shouting as they attempted to gather their family members. Finally he reached the command deck.

“The harvester is away,” he said breathlessly.

No one heard him. All attention was on the main screen as one of the alien ships slid out of the rings and into the cleared area around the station. The harvester was still sluggishly turning away from the station. The alien ship seemed to pause for a moment, as if to consider the scene before it. Would it pursue the harvester? Bielski found himself hoping the alien would go after it in order to give them a little more time, then despised himself for his own weakness. Then the ship turned towards the station, prompting an audible groan on the command deck. Abruptly two missiles lanced out from its flank.

“Oh God!” someone said.

The harvester had completed its turn and begun accelerating slowly away. Coming from directly astern, the missiles slammed in, ripping open the engineering section. What remained of the engines spluttered and ceased functioning. Ahead lay one of the mountains of ice and rock that made up the rings. With engines gone, the harvester’s bows and mid-ship sections coasted forwards, slowly but helplessly. As they watched on the command deck, it ploughed head on into the asteroid. There was a flash of escaping atmosphere as every compartment ruptured.