Battle Earth IV (2 page)

“The Major believes the Krycenaeans are far from gone,” said Taylor.

“Ah fuck it, they’re not here now, are they?”

Taylor smiled. He’d never seen the British Captain be so vulgar and casual. It was a relief to see life return to his eyes. It made him wonder why he felt so down. Jones had been through all he had and worse, and yet was in a better place emotionally.

“How do you do it?” asked Mitch.

“What?”

“Put all this behind you and move forward?”

Jones grimaced as he thought back to his horrifying experience as a prisoner of the invaders. He tried to smile through it, but Taylor could see the pain still burning inside.

“There’s nothing else to do, is there? You can wallow in it all and become a head case like I did, or man the fuck up.”

Taylor’s eyebrow lifted as he turned his head and looked at his old friend in surprise. For a moment he had sounded like the forever cool headed Captain Friday. It was a sad reminder of the loss of one good friend, but a pleasant experience to see the return of another. Jones stepped past and patted him on the back.

“Come on, Mitch, this ain’t half bad. War’s over, and we can finally enjoy ourselves a little.”

Taylor finished up and strode over to the washbasins as Jones left the room. He cupped water from the tap and splashed it over his face. The cool clear water instantly gave him a wake up kick. He breathed in deeply as he tried to relax and settle down. For all the time he had wanted to see the war end, having to confront a new life of peace was more difficult than he expected.

He walked past the drier and shook his hands off as he stepped back out into the bar. Within a few metres, he was once again stopped by one of the MDF servicemen. Lieutenant Perera stood before him with an angry face and a bottle held at its neck by his side. Taylor shook his head. He only wanted to return to Eli and enjoy the rest of the evening.

“Come on, man, give me a break,” Taylor snarled.

“You were there when it all began. You were there and could have helped,” replied Perera. “Where were you when our people were butchered, and we fled for our lives?” he spat.

Taylor shook his head in astonishment. He couldn’t help but feel that after everything he had done, he didn’t owe the man anything. He looked down away from the Lieutenant’s angry eyes and could not find any words to utter.

“The deaths of our people are on you! You could have helped!”

Mitch could feel the anger brewing inside as he was being condemned for not saving the lives of people he could never have helped. Perera stood tall in front of him and awaited an answer. Finally, Taylor looked up and stared into his eyes. A frown grew in his face as his tolerance of the man seeped away.

“I have done everything in my power to save as many lives as possible. Why don’t you take some fucking responsibility and stop acting like a pussy?” growled Taylor.

Perera’s face went red with anger, and he took a wild and uncontrolled hook for Mitch’s face. The Major was a little dulled by the alcohol but no more so than the Lieutenant. He ducked under the strike and drove an uppercut into the man’s stomach. As the man reeled in pain, he yanked him back upright and drove a push kick into his torso that threw Perera back across the room and tumbling into several other MDF soldiers.

Before Taylor could marvel at his work, he felt a sharp pain as a punch connected with the side of his jaw. His stumbled a few paces before regaining his balance. Kelly stood there with his guard up and firmly ready to defend his colleague.

“Get ‘em!” shouted Monty.

The bar burst into action as a melee erupted. Taylor was rushed by two of the Moon soldiers who came between him and Kelly and tackled him to the ground. He struggled to get them off but was trapped under their weight. He punched up into the flank of one to soften him up, and the man yelped in pain but did not move. He lifted his knee and smashed it into the same man’s chest that made him gasp for air. The other punched him hard in the face. His head bounced off the ground, and his vision blurred for a moment. He gritted his teeth and thrust upward, striking the man on the edge of his chin. His head recoiled backwards but quickly recovered.

Taylor struggled to get free but could not get out of the grasp of the two men who stubbornly refused to move, no matter how much he softened them up. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jones rush across the room and launch one of the men across the room with a brutal kick. Mitch cut down with a knife hand to the other man’s collar, quickly incapacitated him. Jones hauled Mitch to his feet, and they looked around for their next targets.

“Can’t take you anywhere,” Jones smiled.

Over a dozen soldiers were engaged in an all out battle across the bar with others joining in as it spread. Jones turned to face off against an incoming bunch as Taylor squared up against his next opponent. The MDF soldier before him was a woman, a fact that made him hesitate for a moment. She saw the opening and jabbed him hard to the face, and blood burst from his nose. He turned back with a smile as the blood gleamed on his teeth, her feistiness amusing him.

The woman thrust another strike forwards, but Taylor voided it and took a hold on her arm, wrenching her forward. As she was launched off her feet towards him, he drove a knee into her stomach and quickly followed it with a left to the jaw that knocked her to the ground. He looked up with a smile to revel in the destruction but was met with a snooker cue being wrapped around his face.

Taylor staggered back and tripped over the woman’s body, landing hard on his back. The cue had snapped and splintered off. The impact had been taken on his left cheek and side of his head, momentarily disorientating him. He got to his feet and took a wild swing at another soldier that sent them both off balance and the other man flat on his face to the floor.

He turned around and swayed to one side causing him to stagger and fall into a table. He could feel blood trickling down his face and more than a little dizzy. Sirens rang out from outside the building, quickly followed by the cries of the Military Police as they rushed into the complex with stun batons. He ducked under a strike from one of the batons and hit the officer with an uppercut to his gut. The man folded and collapsed down.

Taylor turned to face another but was hit full force in the back of the knee by a baton. The Major stumbled to get to his feet but was thrust with one of the electrified batons and pushed to the ground. He remembered shaking from the voltage before being struck in the head and knocked unconscious.

* * *

Taylor awoke in a small pool of his own blood and saliva. He was face down on a hard concrete floor. He rolled onto his side and rubbed his eyes as he tried to regain composure and focus. As he began to get his sight back, he could make out cell bars a metre in front. It was a grim reminder of his incarceration, and he leapt up to his feet. He turned to see several other bloodied soldiers sharing the cell with him. He recognised the brothers, Monty and Blinker.

Opposite them were sat Commander Kelly and three of his troops. They looked up at him but showed no aggression. Despite the pain in his body, he felt remarkably sober. He must have been out for some time.

“How you doing, Major?” asked Blinker.

Taylor turned away from the Commander to look at the two friendly faces.

“Still standing, how long we been here?”

“Few hours,” replied Monty.

“Guess they aren’t too keen on a little friendly disagreement?”

The two brothers chuckled.

“You got us in here, Major,” muttered Kelly. “Think you can get us back out?”

Taylor turned around to see that the MDF Commander was not joking. Blood had dried where it had poured from the man’s mouth. He was stern and confident but not confrontational.

“It was your boy that started this. Striking a superior officer, that’s a serious offence.”

“Ah, hell, what does it matter anymore? We just need to get out of this shithole.”

“It matters to me. We have given everything in this war, and I don’t appreciate having the efforts of my Company brought into question by an officer who wasn’t even here.”

Kelly nodded in agreement.

“Look, I get it. I have seen the reports. I know what you and your people have done.”

“No, you don’t,” interrupted Taylor. “You weren’t there. You think you can have any idea of what we went through by reading a few notes?”

Kelly nodded in agreement once again.

“I get it, Major, I really do. We cannot know what you went through, but we didn’t sit this war out either. We were prisoners in our own colony. We had nowhere to run. We were waking up every day and expecting it to be our last. Do you know what it feels like to live within a siege? When you know that if the defences fail, everyone dies. Every soldier, every civilian, all the children.”

Kelly stopped for a minute to take in a deep breath and calm him. “Our war was no walk in the park is all I am saying.”

“I never said it wasn’t, but I didn’t look for a fight back there,” snapped Taylor.

Taylor turned and paced back across the room.

“I am not saying what Lieutenant Perera did was right. I’m just saying that under such extreme pressure, we don’t always make the best decisions. We’ve lost our home colony and a great deal of our friends. I will discipline him appropriately.”

Taylor strolled over to Monty and took a seat beside him on the hard and uncomfortable bench that ran the length of the wall.

“You should know that I never wanted to leave your colony back then. I wanted to help you, but I had no choice.”

Kelly sighed. “I know. None of us could have foreseen this was the way it was gonna go. Who could have known we would ever have to face such an enemy in our lifetimes? Hell, in our history?”

“We made it though, didn’t we?” replied Taylor. “We’re still standing.”

“True, but many aren’t. All we ever wanted was to be left alone on our colony. We thought the threat upon us came from Earth, from corporations and governments wanting to muscle in on what we had. Never could we have imagined that we’d have to flee our homes.”

“You really like it up there that much? Living in artificial environments?”

“It was our land. Few Earthers ever understood.”

“No, I get it. A man will defend what is his to the very end, no matter how little it may seem in the face of others. But now you have a chance to rebuild your community here on Earth. Hell, there’s certainly some space going free.”

“It’s not a pleasant thought to be filling a space where a population has been exterminated,” he replied.

The cell went silent as they all thought about it for a moment.

“By that thought, we’d never live anywhere. Humans have butchered each other for as long as we have lived, and wherever you are, you stand over bloodied ground.”

“Maybe that’s why we liked the Moon. We started from afresh,” replied Kelly.

Doors opened down the corridor and footsteps approached. Moments later, Commander Phillips appeared with an MP on either side. No one in the cell uttered a word.

“Major Taylor, it seems you are adamant to get back behind bars. Commander Kelly, I was surprised to see your name on the list of those detained during this disturbance.”

“It was a soldier’s disagreement, nothing more.”

“I trust it has now been resolved?”

The two officers nodded in agreement.

“Good. We have seen enough conflict over the last year, so how about we work together from now on? I can put this down to a little too much drink and a one off incident, but Gentlemen, do not let it happen again. The French authorities are trying to rebuild their country, and the last thing they need is trouble. You’re all here to help rebuild, not destroy what’s left.”

“Understood, Sir,” replied Taylor.

“Major Chandra informs me that you are moving out at noon. I have procured release for all of you, on the condition that you will all return immediately to your billets and sleep off this silliness.”

“Much appreciated, Sir. You won’t see any more trouble from us.”

“See that I don’t.”

The MPs stepped forward and opened the doors of the cell. The soldiers sat on both sides of the room sighed as they stood up and worked their aching muscles and joints. Kelly stood before Taylor.