The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) (31 page)

The
Lennox
, smallest of the support ships had been detailed to accommodate the survivors. Cargos were being hastily reassigned because once the civilian survivors boarded, the whole ship would be under quarantine. They also loaded up a dozen of the least damaged Nameless bodies. Two of them were dressed in outfits that seemed more high quality than the rest. Maybe they were officers? No way to know. The true prize should have been the computer, however. She’d examined the screen, but beyond establishing it was definitely writing, there wasn’t much more that could be determined. For all she knew the screen could be displaying the Nameless’s complete war plans – or someone’s shopping list.

“I wonder if those brain boxes are part of a security system?” Kinberg asked, gesturing toward
De Gaulle
’s doctor as he examined one of the bio computers. With their biotech construction, Kinberg – like the rest of marines – had quickly taken to referring to the Nameless computers as brain boxes.

“I mean as soon as we unplug them, the tissue inside starts to die.”

Examples of Nameless electronic computers had already being shipped out. But the bio computers could not be so easily moved however, plugged as they were not only into the electrical systems but some kind of nutrient feed that simply could not be replicated at such short notice. They could, and certainly would, take examples but it would be dead meat long, long before they reached Earth.

“That might just be an occasionally useful side effect,” Willis replied. “Biotech has a hell of a lot of disadvantages on the whole. But then brain tissue is gram for gram still the best computer the universe has ever seen.”

One of the marines approached and saluted.

“Captain, Lieutenant,” he began, “one of the civilian survivors has requested to speak to you.”

“Those people are supposed to be getting evacuated to the
Lennox
,” Willis replied.

“I know, ma’am, and he is in the last group to go over. He says it’s important.”

“Alright, escort him here.”

“Try to keep it quick though, Captain. These people are frail.”

The man gently guided into the control room was beyond frail. Skeletal would be closer and Willis doubted he could have even stood in anything approaching Earth gravity. He clutched a blanket but in zero gravity it floated around him, revealing pale and papery skin. All activity within the chamber came to a halt, as everyone else, dressed in space suits and combat armour, turned to look at the almost naked man. The corpsman gently guided him over to Willis.

“Hello,” she said uncertainly, “my name is Captain Faith Willis of the Battle Fleet ship
Spectre
.”

“Mateusz Bielski,” he whispered, “Junction Station.”

“What can I do for you, Mister Bielski?” she asked after deciding a firm tone was likely to serve best.

“You’re looking for information. I can help.”

“And you will, sir, when you’re debriefed, but I need you on the
Lennox
. We…”

“No!”

The force of his exclamation was enough to set Bielski off coughing. Doubled over, his frail body convulsed. Willis nodded to the marine.

“Get him out.”

Bielski’s claw like hand shot out and latched onto her arm. Beneath the suit she could feel her flesh crawl.

“No,” this time his voice was calmer, “I’ve been here.”

“Here? In this room?”

Bielski nodded.

“I’ve seen them use their computers. They brought me here to be examined and to interrogate me.”

“Did you see what controls they used?”

Willis’s voice was urgent now. He nodded and pointed to one of the freestanding computer terminals. Carefully, as if he were made of glass, she guided him over. Bielski studied the terminal for several seconds and then with a shaking hand he reached out and pressed several different buttons. A holo display at the centre of the terminal came to life.

“I don’t know if this is a password or just a command line,” he rasped, “but I saw it often enough to memorise. They wanted to know where our planets are.”

“Did you tell them?” she asked quietly.

“Yes,” he sobbed. “We tried not to but they...”

Tears floated from his face.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” she tried to assure him.

The burns and bruises on Bielski’s wreck of a body told their own story.

Bielski steadied himself and worked the controls to bring up what looked like a list of files. He scrolled down and activated one particular file. The list disappeared and an image, not much more than a series of blips with writing beside, them appeared.

“What’s that supposed to tell us?”

Kinberg said what Willis was thinking.

“It’s a map,” Bielski whispered, pointing an unsteady finger into the holo. “We are here and here is Junction and here – here are their home worlds.”

Suddenly, like an optical illusion, Willis found she could see it.

“Oh my God,” she said breathlessly.

She moved slightly to the left and allowed her eyes to track downwards. The layout of the blips started to match standard two-dimensional representations of human space. There was Landfall, below was Junction Station and the rest of the Junction Line, and below that, highlighted in purple, the position of Earth. Her gaze went upwards. There, not as far above as Earth was below, lay a cluster of large yellow blips representing planets – Nameless planets.

Bielski’s hand closed around her arm.

“Captain, promise me one thing. Just one thing,” he said as he stared at her, his eyes burning with a ferocity that sent a shiver down her spine. Wordlessly she nodded.

“Promise me you will make them
pay
!”

Chapter Thirteen

Search for the Grail

20th July 2068 

“Council members. Our analysis of the information provided by the
De Gaulle
task force is as yet incomplete,” Commodore Tsukioka told the gathering in the briefing room. “Examination of the data recovered and, more significantly, the interviews with the Junction survivors are at this time ongoing. In particular, the latter’s medical condition means that the interview process is slow. Therefore, I must qualify this briefing by saying that both revisions and corrections, are not just possible, but likely.”

He paused for any replies. But there was only a grunt from President Clifton that implied he should get on with it.

“The recovery of the Junction Survivors has finally lifted the veil from our opponent, giving us an insight into the history and mindset of the Nameless that we had never expected to receive and fills key gaps in the information provided by the Aèllr,” Tsukioka continued. “The majority of the information comes from the testimony of the survivor, Mateusz Bielski.”

“Obviously a strong-willed man and one we owe a great debt to,”
Clifton observed. “But I am surprised that the Nameless interrogator was willing to hand out so much information.”

“Perhaps Madam President, their interrogator simply wasn’t very good,” Wingate said. “But it’s more likely that, in so far as they knew, there was no way any intelligence would get back to us, so handing out information in return for information cost them nothing. The fact that the Nameless attempted to murder them just before they were rescued might indicate that they realised the danger. But that is conjecture.”

“Before we get to the meat of the matter, Commodore, can you answer a nagging question? Do we now know what the Nameless call themselves?” Clifton asked.

“We believe so,” Tsukioka replied. “However, as it appears most of their vocal range is at frequencies too low for us to hear, we can’t use it. Besides which, it appears to roughly translate as ‘people’, so Nameless they remain. Most pertinently, one of the first things we have learned is that neither we nor the Centaurs were the first sentient beings the Nameless have attacked. We are in fact the fourth race to have been subject to their aggression.

“Their first act of genocide dates from the Nameless Diaspora period. As we know, the Nameless race depleted the resources of their home solar system, one located at the very tip of their arm of the galaxy. This latter point is important because as we now know, the distance they can jump from one system to another is limited. This meant that their jump drives – which were at this time newly developed – were operating at the ragged edge of their capabilities. The Nameless launched colony ships, most of which were lost, but at least one though which found a planet on which they could settle. The population that landed on this new world numbered only a few tens of thousands. With such small numbers their attention was, not unreasonably, fixed upon the surface. As a result they failed to observe an approaching alien vessel in real space until it was only a few weeks away from the planet. 

“In contrast to their first encounter with us, the Nameless dispatched one of their ships to approach and open a dialogue with the alien vessel. It opened fire without warning, destroying the Nameless ship. It also launched projectiles towards the site of the only major settlement the Nameless had managed to build on the planet. However, while the Nameless ships of the period were crude compared to their modern designs, they were armed and they were jump capable. As such, once the attacking aliens had spent the element of surprise, they were outmatched by the jump capable Nameless and destroyed without further loss.”

“Do we know what the motivation of this other race was to mount such an attack?” the Indian Prime Minister asked.

“No,” Tsukioka replied. “But if the alien ship had made a real space passage across interstellar space, only to find another race already ensconced, they may have felt they had no choice. Whatever the reason, it proved catastrophic for them. This encounter seems to have had the most profound effect on the Nameless, for it was then that they developed the ideology that other sentient races cannot be allowed to exist – that other races, regardless to whether they are hostile or even capable of being hostile, are a threat. To them, even a benign race – simply through their consumption of resources – threatens the extinction of the Nameless.

“Commodore, I must interrupt,” Prime Minister Layland said. “I just don’t understand how a race with jump technology can look upon the galaxy and see limited resources. I mean, I can understand when they were limited to a single system, but now?”

“It would appear the fundamental nature of their jump drive technology is in part responsible, Mister Prime Minister,” Tsukioka replied. “From the Siege of Earth, we know that the Nameless cannot jump to interstellar space. They must jump from one solar system to another and those individual jumps cannot be too far. Which means the vast starless void between galaxies is a barrier they cannot cross. When this galaxy dies, they will have no means of escape.”

When Layland opened his mouth to speak Tsukioka cut him off.

“Sir, this is an alien mindset. It is the worldview that guides them. As humans have demonstrated repeatedly, reality is a matter of opinion. Now moving on, after the attack, they rebuilt, improved their jump drive technology, tracked the aliens back to their home world and destroyed it. Since then, they have destroyed two more races. The Centaurs and a race that had achieve stone-age technology.”

“I’m sorry?
Stone age
?” Clifton asked.

“Yes, Madam President, the Nameless – an interstellar capable species – discovered a stone-age culture that had merely achieved flint knapping and basic mastery of fire. Yet they classed them as a threat and eliminated them.”

Lewis had been listening silently, but now he spoke up.

“So what you are saying is that the only certain way to end the threat posed by the Nameless would be to inflict genocide on them,” he said in an uncompromising tone. “Which is unfortunate; mainly because we are in no position to do it.”

“Well, that confirms merely what we already suspected – that the Nameless will not end the war on any terms other than their own,” Clifton said. “What else did we get?”

“The jewel in the crown of our discoveries is this.”

Tsukioka pressed a control and the conference table’s holo came to life, displaying a star map.

“This appears to be their region of space and ours as they know it. This cluster here at the top would seem to be the Nameless core worlds, with an outer ring of settled planets.”

“That looks to be a very long way from us,” Layland observed.

“They are located in the next arm of the Milky Way, which means that the distance between us and them is vast,” Wingate replied. “Up to now that distance has played in our favour, since it has meant that they have not been able to project against us anything even approaching their full strength. But now it means we cannot project our strength against them. Simply put, we couldn’t sustain a fleet that far from Earth long enough to win a campaign.”

“Raiding cruisers?” asked the Chinese premier.

“An option certainly but raiders won’t win a war on their own,” Wingate said.

“Alright, carry on Commodore,” Clifton said after a moment.

“Several months ago, Admiral Lewis put forward a suggestion that the Nameless used clones or some other kind of manufactured crews. Based on the initial examination of the bodies brought back by the
De Gaulle
task force, this could now be described as a working theory.”

Tsukioka paused to operate the holo controls and the star map was replaced by 3D images of two Nameless bodies. Both showed signs of bullet wounds.

“The
De Gaulle
group brought back over a dozen bodies, enough of a sample to identify two clear groups. The one on the left was what we refer to as the workers. The most immediately noticeable difference is here at the head – this computer socket, with wiring that goes deep into the brain. There is no sign of scarring, which suggests that this is not surgically implanted. The opinion from the medical experts so far consulted, indicates that the only way such equipment could be put into place would be by growing the brain around the wiring.”

“All examples of such Nameless were dressed in Blue. The specimen on the right was dressed in yellow. Other examples were found in various clothing of various colours and style, but never in Blue. The colour they were in, appeared to pertain to role or rank. None of these Nameless had the computer jack. Further examination indicated there were other more physiological differences.”

The image changed. This time they showed each body partly dissected. A few people in the room grimaced.

“The senior doctor with the
De Gaulle
group opened up two of the bodies to perform a basic analysis. She immediately noticed that compared to those Nameless without the computer port, those with it were missing a number of internal organs. Since one of the un-ported bodies was pregnant, she was able to establish the ported Nameless lack any reproductive organs.”

“So, is it an artificial life form?” Layland asked.

“Yes, sir,” Tsukioka replied.

“A stripped down Nameless,” Lewis interjected, “more or less a biological robot, fitted with nothing beyond the equipment it requires to do the job it was bred for.”

“But to what end such... modifications?” asked the Indian prime minister.

Tsukioka glanced toward Lewis.

“There is no real evidence at this point to support a genuine theory sir,” he said. “But Admiral Lewis had put forward the idea that the Nameless manufacture the ported drones, to use them as a workforce and as the bulk of their military force. It is suggested that these can be grown to a mature state much faster than a ‘natural’ Nameless. The computer port allows the drones to be ‘educated’ while they are grown, so when they are decanted, they are ready to serve as workers – soldiers – whatever Nameless society requires. The ones without the ports are the real Nameless. It offers a plausible explanation as to why the Nameless have always taken such a casual attitude to losses. If only the ship’s officers are classed as real people, then the drones are treated as lost equipment. Given that the Nameless have been seen to use modified animals from the Centaur planet as foot soldiers, with brain tissue used for computers, it seems they have thoroughly mastered bio manipulation technology.”

“Raising the veil seems to raise as many questions as it answers. To create such... abominations...”
Clifton trailed off shaking her head.

“Abomination is a human concept,” Lewis said. “If you have the technology and the willingness, then potentially you can replace a lost soldier within a few years. Whereas when we lose a man or woman, it takes us at least twenty years to nurture, raise and train their replacement. So, they have a huge advantage.”

“It may be that after their original Diaspora, and particularly after the alien attack, the Nameless needed to ‘make up the numbers’ and from there, the practice took root,” Tsukioka said. “But now we are guessing.”

“If they are clones, is there any prospect of using biological warfare against them?”

Heads turned sharply. The speaker was the Chinese premier. He looked unperturbed.

“That question has been raised.” Tsukioka’s eyes flicked towards Lewis. “The answer appears to be no, or at least not in any timeframe available to us. With a completely new species, it will probably take ten years just to achieve enough understanding of their biology to even start work on a biological weapon. And that would still leave open the question of how to deliver such a weapon.”

“Regardless of ethics, for practical reasons biological warfare is not the answer,” Wingate added. “Anything too lethal will simply burn itself out before it can affect more than a small number of individuals. Anything slow enough to affect a multi-system species, would take longer to destroy such a species than we have. Even if we had such a compound, it would be a last strike revenge weapon at best.”

“Alright Admiral. I appreciate that we have not achieved a magic bullet, not yet anyway. What can you tell us of the situation on the front?”
Clifton asked.

“It remains as it has since we broke the siege. The Nameless continue to avoid large-scale encounters or indeed any encounters likely to result in casualties. Principally, they are targeting our support ships, while we in turn engage in search and destroy operations against their gate network and supply dumps.”

“Is this the time to attempt to liberate Landfall?” the Indian prime minister asked. “Would this not force the Nameless to stand and fight?”

“It would also place a substantial part of our fleet a long way from Earth and make a large number of ground troops vulnerable to being cut off if the fleet were forced to retreat again,” Wingate replied.

“Furthermore, such a move would commit a lot of resources to an operation that could not hope to land a knockout blow,” Lewis said bluntly. “And a knockout blow is what we need, not a humanitarian mission.”

“Admiral Lewis, I appreciate your view that we must win the war with our next blow, but we cannot wait forever,”
Clifton said. “As you yourself made clear, the window of opportunity is closing. Waiting for the perfect moment is likely to leave us hesitating until the moment is lost.”