The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) (30 page)

“We have to make best use of the time then. Captain Willis, we need to do something deeply irregular. I need a senior officer over there to take command of the intelligence gathering. I know this is more appropriate a task for a commander, but this time, we need someone with greater seniority directly on the scene. If Nameless reinforcements arrive, we may have to withdraw with haste and
De Gaulle
will have to cover that retreat.”

“I understand, sir,” Willis replied as she felt her heart start to hammer.

___________________________

Nameless, faceless, voiceless – ever since the Mississippi Incident two years previously, they had been nothing but raw and unexplained belligerence. Humanity had fought a war of survival without knowing who or what it was even fighting. Now there was a possibility that mask was about to be lifted. As she stood still to allow a rating to fit an extended support pack onto her survival suit, Willis realised she was one part scared to one part excited.

“I still think we should send you over in a shuttle,” Commander Yaya said as the two of them peered through the open airlock.

“There’s barely room between us to deploy a shuttle, Commander. Besides, there’s still no airlock we could lock onto. Don’t worry though, I’m rated for space walks.”

“Still, the Admiral should be sending me.”

“You just worry about your job, Commander.”

Willis tried to remove any sting from her words by adding with an awkward smile: “Besides this is a win-win scenario. If you went over and got shot, I’d have to fill in tons of paperwork. But if I go over there and do something stupid, you might get that promotion you deserve.”

“Yes, Captain, but then I’ll have to do the paperwork.”

“True, but I’ll be dead so I won’t care,” Willis grinned.

“So win-win for you and win-win-lose for me! I can live with that. Just the same, Captain – be careful.”

Lieutenant Kinberg met Willis at the airlock as she pulled herself through.

“Welcome aboard, ma’am,” he with a salute, as a pair of ratings assigned as her assistants followed behind.

Willis barely heard him, instead focusing her attention on her first look at enemy territory. At first glance, it was all very mundane. But then there were only so many ways to build a space station. There were scorch marks from the explosives and several weapon strikes. With her experienced eye, a second glance revealed details that were just wrong – like the covering on the he bulkhead behind Kinberg, which showed signs of wear like those that might be seen on a floor.

“Yeah,” he said glancing, over his shoulder. “This place is like an onion – it’s like layers of decks going inward. One of my sergeants was the first one in. She claims she could feel a gravity effect pulling towards the centre. Not much, a fraction of a G
– at least that’s what she thinks.”

Humanity could simulate gravity by either spin or acceleration. There were true artificial gravity methods she’d read about in the technical journals. Some worked under laboratory conditions, others purely on paper. Either way, they were far from practical systems. It seemed the Nameless had developed some kind of system that worked. The next question was – could they find and identify it?

“With respect, ma’am, this isn’t really somewhere we want a ship officer running around. We lost the Major because one of those bastards popped out of a section we thought we’d cleared, so I’m assigning you Marines Jahmene and Keys for your security.”

“That’s all right, Lieutenant,” Willis replied. “I won’t try to tell you how to do your job, but we’ll have
to rip as much out of this place as we can.”

“Well then, follow me. We haven’t had a chance to ID much so far, but you might as well get to meet the enemy.”

It was hard to know what she’d expected, hard to know what even to expect from a race that had acted with such automatic hostility – certainly something more impressive. It wasn’t big and probably massed less than she did. It had four limbs and, even twisted in death, its posture made clear that the normal axis of its body was horizontal like a dog or a horse rather than vertical like a human. Its limbs were much longer in proportion to a human and had four points of articulation. The back pair – dedicated legs – ended in something like a hoof. The front pair seemed to be dual-purpose. There was a hardened area at the wrist, which could presumably be used to walk on, but beyond that there was definitely a hand
– very definitely by the way it still gripped the weapon it had been using when the marines cut it down.

She took a grip of its long neck and pulled the head round. Like a snake, or maybe worm, was the closest Terran comparison. The head wasn’t much wider than the neck and tapered to a blunt point. It only had one eye, or at least it only had one now. The shot that killed it had blown open one side of its head, spilling a turquoise fluid. The surviving eye was forward facing, which was to be expected
– every known sentient race had evolved from hunting species. The mouth was a lipless line that went back towards the neck and opened left and right. The overall effect was a cross between a horse and a giant worm.

“Ugly,” muttered one of the ratings.

“Eye of the beholder,” Willis said absently as she prised open the jaws with a pencil. Its teeth at the front were sharp meat cutters and the broad grinding teeth at the back those of an omnivore. A proper biologist would probably observe more. Such knowledge was unlikely to have any military relevance, but her curiosity demanded satisfaction. Looking around the chamber, that satisfaction soon disappeared.  Although poorly equipped compared to the marines, the Nameless soldiers had shown no reluctance to fight and, defending familiar ground, had exacted a terrible toll on the invaders. There was a splash of human blood on the bulkhead opposite where they had nailed the first marine through the hatch.

As Willis considered all this, something moved in her peripheral vision. Turning, she caught sight of something like a rat scuttling along a cable. One of the ratings swore and took a swipe at it. The creature easily dodged the blow and continued along.

“Yeah, we’ve seen a few of them,” one of her escorts told her. “Not hostile, but I don’t know what they are. Food? Pets?”

As he spoke Willis saw the creature reach a point where the cable had been severed by a bullet strike. The gap was tiny, but the creature stopped and twitched its nose as it examined the break. Then it sat up, its rear leg gripping the cable. Willis felt her mouth drop as she saw the creature had a small bag or pouch hanging from its belly, from which it pulled out what appeared to be a small length of cable and began to splice it into place to repair the break.

“Oh my god,” she murmured as she watched the tiny creature finish its work. It looked around then sprang towards another damaged cable.

“Quick, grab it!” she ordered, as the creature sailed across the chamber.

One marine’s armoured gauntlet closed on it and then it did the strangest thing yet – absolutely nothing. Even the most placid domestic animal would wriggle or struggle if grabbed like that. But this thing just stopped moving. It had been a good catch by the marine, he’d avoided crushing it and wasn’t holding it firmly, but the creature wasn’t making any movement beyond breathing.

“Some kind of biotech?”  someone asked.

“Don’t know. Box it men. We’ll be taking a lot of samples.”

“They made their way through what were apparently accommodation areas, all of them showing signs of heavy fighting. There were bodies everywhere and in the distance there was still the occasional crackle of gunfire. They came into a large chamber with a lot of computer equipment, most of it still turned on – so some kind of command centre by the look of it.

“Bingo,” Willis said to herself, as she looked around.

“Captain!”

Willis looked up from the computer panel she was examining. Even after an hour they were only scratching the surface. They’d opened up several damaged pieces and found living tissue, indicating biological computers the like of which she’d never seen or even heard of before. There were more conventional electrical computers but they appeared to be backups. With her thoughts swirling, she didn’t take in what the marine said.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Ma’am, Lieutenant Kinberg has asked you to join him. Ma’am we’ve found something.”

“What is it?” she asked, still half distracted.

“Captain, you need to see this!

Finally the marine’s tone penetrated her consciousness. He wasn’t just rattled – he was actively shocked.

The section of the station they led her to, did not seem to have seen as much fighting as others. Several marines were there and, while it was hard to read body language through space suits and body armour, there was a definite vibe of fear and anger.

As she approached Kinberg, Willis glanced towards the marine sergeant present. Through his visor she could see his face, a strong face, but after a moment she realised that the blobs of liquid inside his helmet were tears.

“What is it? What’s going on?” she demanded.

Kinberg looked sick as he waved her towards the hatch he was floating by. Willis pulled herself through – and stopped half way. The chamber looked like someone had thrown a bucket of blood around. A severed human arm drifted near the centre of the chamber. Two marine corpsmen were treating casualties – human casualties but not marines! Instead, maybe a dozen men and women were scattered around the chamber, all of them little more than skeletons, all of them naked.

“Movement was detected and Sergeant Lyons threw a grenade through the hatch,” Kinberg told her as the two of them returned to the command deck. He shook his head with an expression of genuine distress. “He didn’t know! No one told us there would be humans here!”

“No one knew Lieutenant,” Willis said before addressing Nisman via the communications link-up they’d established with the squadron.

“To be honest, sir, I think some poor brave bastard wrapped him or herself round the grenade. Otherwise it would likely have killed everyone in the chamber.”

She instantly regretted saying it within Kinberg’s hearing. It wasn’t the fault of the man who threw the grenade or any other marine. Based on the information available, the sergeant’s decision had been correct. Even so, the emotional part of her still wondered how he could have done such a thing.

“Any idea where the hell they came from, Captain?”

“They’re civilians sir, that much I’m sure of. Between Junction and Landfall, the bastards have had plenty of opportunities to capture civvies.”

Nisman’s expression was grim.

“The marines found a lab in a neighbouring compartment. The civilians were clearly being used for research and experimentation... vivisection and various other...” Willis had to swallow to force down the bile threatening to rise inside her. She’d taken a glance in the hatch and that had been enough. Given time, she’d process it mentally but for the moment, she had to force herself not to think about it.

“Various other procedures. I don’t know why they weren’t killed before we boarded, but it would appear the section of the station the prisoners were being kept in, was cut off from the rest by the first assault.”

She wondered whether this could in some way account for the dogged defence the Nameless had mounted. Had they known there was no way they could hide or destroy the evidence of what they had done? Had they guessed that this act would place them beyond any reconciliation or forgiveness?

“Have they said anything?”

“Not yet, sir,” she replied shaking her head. “Admiral, these people are in a bad way. Have you ever seen pictures of concentration camp survivors from the twentieth century?”

“Dear God, that bad?”

She nodded.

Nisman took a deep breath, clearly composing himself.

“Then we have a difficult decision to make. If those people have been experimented on, then they may have become biological weapons. We may not be able to take them with us.”

Beside her, Willis sensed Kinberg stiffen angrily. Outside the camera’s pick-up, she laid a restraining hand on his arm.

“Sir, we have a number of wounded marines with compromised suits. Unless we’re prepared to leave behind some of our own, that line has already been crossed. The other thing is, sir, I could spend six months in here and not find anything we can actually use. Those people offer the best chance of getting serious intel, but that will mean professional medical treatment on Earth.”

“Well, we don’t have six months,” Nisman replied. “We picked up another set of FTL transmissions. These didn’t come from the same direction we did. They came the other way and were definitely closer than the last lot. I don’t want the Nameless to know in what strength we are here or that we boarded their station. So in six hours we will evacuate and destroy it. In the meantime, get as much as you can.”

“Water, water, everywhere but not a drop to drink,” Willis muttered to herself as she surveyed the command area.

With the last of the Nameless eliminated, most of the marines were now actively assisting with the recovery effort, along with several more members of
Spectre
’s crew sent over to lend a hand.
Pankhurst
and the support ships had been called in, while a message drone had been dispatched in the opposite direction, back along the trail of satellites they’d left in their wake, to inform Earth of their discovery.