EDEN (The Union Series) (11 page)

I stopped, realizing
that I had included Gritt in my numbers. Was Puppy taking a cheap shot at me? I
studied his face, but there was no sign of malice.

‘Four, sorry,’ I
continued after a pause. There was no time to replace Gritt, not at such short
notice. The casualty replacement system on Eden was pretty slick, replacing
lost troopers within days, but recce troopers were harder to come by. They
didn’t just float around Paraiso without a job. I would have to make do
without.

‘Four MSGs,’ I
continued, ‘all equipped with grenade launchers.’

‘All four?’

‘Yeah. I want the
section to pack a punch. We’ll also take a smart launcher in each fire team,
with eight missiles for each.’

Puppy spoke through
clenched teeth. ‘That’s a fair bit of weight …’

‘It is,’ I agreed,
‘but if each man carries a couple it’ll spread the load. We’ll also up the
ammunition - every man is to carry an additional ten per cent reserve on top of
his usual allocation.’

The 2ic looked up at
me in alarm, but I waved his concern away. ‘We’re not on a recce patrol, mate.
If we’re just walking around watching the FEA do the work, then the blokes will
hate me for lumbering them with kit they don’t need, but if we end up doing
anything remotely like what the boss just described, we will need plenty of
weapons and ammo. A smart missile weighs nothing once you’ve fired it.’

Puppy didn’t speak
for a few seconds, then finally nodded. It was my decision, at the end of the
day, and I was right. I knew it, even if he didn’t. I wasn’t about to drop into
a warzone and rub shoulders with our old enemy without some serious firepower
at my disposal.

Once Puppy was happy
with all that he had to do, I returned to my chamber to prepare my own kit. The
sergeant major would want to see my kit as well during his inspection, not that
it made a difference, I would have spent hours tinkering with it even if he
wasn’t going to look, checking every item twice. Now that I had a new mission,
I absorbed myself in it.

After an hour of
checking batteries and canisters, and packing and repacking my kit until it was
perfect, I took my gel armour, datapad and respirator down to Electronic
Warfare.

Deemed to be one of
the most important assets to the platoon, the EW team were located at the
lowest depths of the warren, even beneath life support. Their chamber was lined
with wires and cables, crossing over each other and running through computer
hardware like the roots of a plant. Several EW operators sat around the room,
waving their arms through holograms that scrolled with endless streams of data.
I never really understood everything that they did, but I did know that a
constant electronic war was being fought by them, with dire consequences if it
was lost. I remembered when New Earth hackers tried to force Union ships to
bomb their own people, and shuddered at the thought of what the FEA or the
Loyalists might do if they ever managed to break through our EW defences.

I didn’t bother the operators
whilst they worked, knowing that I would probably be rudely told where to go.
Instead I walked over to the far side of the chamber, where two other NCOs
stood waiting with their kit in their arms, talking quietly. I recognised them
instantly. Corporal Stanton and Corporal Kamara were both section commanders
from the sergeant major’s multiple, neither of whom I got on with well. They
never gave me any trouble, but the air was always icy whenever I was near them.
I suspected it had something to do with what had happened to Westy and Ev, and
the stories that circulated about my involvement with them.

The two NCOs spotted
my approach, suddenly falling silent. They regarded me warily.

‘Alright, mate?’ one
asked with caution.

‘Yeah,’ I replied
brusquely, cutting off any opportunity to continue the conversation.

What a pair of
belters
,
I thought, knowing they had probably been talking about me.
I
could tell what was going through their minds as they stood waiting to have
their wizard kit checked: there’s Lance Corporal Moralee, the lunatic who gets
his mates shot up and sent to jail. What’s he still doing here, shouldn’t he be
sacked? I could feel my anger building at the awkward silence.

Fortunately I was
saved by the arrival of an operator, who began plugging each item of our kit
into a tablet that he carried. He checked the calibration, making sure that the
retinal scanners in our respirator visors were communicating with our datapads
through the wires woven into the fabric of our armour.

The wizard kit wasn’t
anything special, in fact you didn’t know that a trooper was equipped with it
just by looking at him. It was nothing more than a few additional chips and
wires added to the Integrated Soldier Technology we already carried- the same
system that allowed us to mark targets and locations with crosshairs that only
our sections could see. It allowed a trooper to direct a saucer, warship or
missile onto a target by simply looking and pointing. He could even drop entire
salvos across the landscape with little more than a sweep of the arm, so long
as the ships were available and they were happy to fire. A trooper using the
kit really did look like a wizard, pointing and sweeping his arms to direct
bombs toward their targets. The only disadvantage was that you had to be able
to see the target to use the wizard kit, otherwise you had to resort to using
the datapad like everyone else.

‘Remember, take good
care of this kit around the FEA,’ the operator warned us as he checked each
piece of kit. ‘They’d love to get hold of it, even if they can’t use it. It’ll go
back to their own EW, and probably be turned against us. The people of Edo can
be pretty resourceful.’

Corporal Kamara
laughed. ‘Well, I think I’d notice if they took it, I need my respirator to
breathe!’

The operator regarded
him sternly. ‘I don’t think they’ll much care if you’re breathing or not.’

‘They’ll have to get
me first.’

The operator appeared
unimpressed by the display of bravado, and returned our kit to us. ‘Whatever.
Just make sure your men know. If you go down they are to take your respirator
and datapad away with them. If they can’t, they are to deny them, on or off
your body …’

To a trooper, ‘deny’
meant to destroy a piece of equipment that he couldn’t take with him, rather
than leaving it for the enemy. The action was often carried out using a
grenade.

‘At least I’m
guaranteed to go out with a bang, then,’ Stan said sarcastically, and then left
along with Joe.

‘I’m being serious,’
the operator insisted, as I turned to follow them.

‘They know you’re
being serious,’ I assured him. ‘That’s just the way some troopers are. Don’t
worry about it, they took the point.’

‘The wizard kit gives
you complete access to everything in the sky,’ he went on. ‘You can’t use it to
drop bombs on Paraiso, but you can drop them pretty much anywhere else. It
can’t fall into the wrong hands.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s
hardly new technology, is it? Anyway, if they got hold of it we’d simply change
the net scramble. Plus it only works if it recognises my retina anyway.’

‘That’s one of the
things we worry about. All these people need is this kit …’ he pointed at my
respirator visor, then poked my chest, ‘… and you.’

Back to the contents page

Rendezvous

The platoon extracted
from the warren just after midnight, having been relieved by a small detachment
of troopers provided by our battalion to secure our home whilst we were away.
After a two kilometre patrol through the forest, we were met by several dropships,
waiting to take us back to Paraiso to prepare for deployment.

My section clambered
aboard our dropship whilst I stood by the ramp, counting them on. Buckles
clipped as they strapped themselves into the tiny compartment, making sure each
strap was tight so that they couldn’t be thrown around inside.

My visor display
identified the sergeant major walking around the dropships in the dark,
checking that all the commanders were happy, and that their men were all
present and loaded up. I gave him a thumbs-up, and when he returned it, I
stepped up onto the ramp.

The section was already
half-asleep as I took my seat, their heads lolling forward. There was no reason
to wake them, they were only flying back to Paraiso, and there was no telling
how much sleep they would get in the coming days. Troopers slept when they
could - it was good personal administration, after all.

As I pulled my straps
tight and fastened my rifle into the rack beside me. I thought about what I
needed to do upon our arrival in Paraiso. We had already received our orders,
although there was always a chance they might change again during the night. We
knew we were inserting deep into the Bosque by parachute, so we all needed to
collect and pack them. We always packed our own chutes, because it was our
lives they were saving. We never trusted another trooper to do it for us, and
we certainly didn’t trust the conscripts to do it either. Once all that was
done, and hopefully with enough time to spare, we would rest, waiting for the
green light to go.

‘What are you guys
doing now?’ a Danish accented voice asked over the dropship net. ‘Anything
exciting?’

I smiled, although
the dropship commander wouldn’t be able to see it. ‘I wish I could tell you,
mate.’

‘I have a good idea.’

The dropship ramp
closed, and we sped off toward Paraiso to prepare for our jump.

Paraiso spaceport was
dead by the time we arrived, with only a few military aircraft coming and
going, their landing lights flashing just before they disappeared into the
night sky. With little to distract us, we busied ourselves loading our saucer
within its hangar. Cradled in a shrine of wires and girders, the machine was
deathly silent, its perfect lines and smooth surface masking its purpose as a
killing machine that could turn entire sections, even companies into pink mush.

I had been at the
mercy of saucers before, once during the war, when the robotic craft had
strafed down the ditch where my platoon had taken cover, tossing limbs and
organs into the air and scattering them across the ground. The second time it
was one of our own saucers, turned against us by hackers whilst we cleared
through one of the tallest buildings on New Earth. They were terrifying
machines, shaped to allow maximum acceleration in all directions, and armed
with a devastating payload of bombs, missiles and thirty-millimetre shells. If
you saw one that wasn’t yours, you ran. If you saw one that was yours, you
stayed out of the way!

This saucer was
different to all of the others, though. It carried no weapons, and no bombs.
Instead it had been left hollow, its insides turned into a crude troop compartment,
and its inspection hatch turned into a cargo door. The seats were tightly
packed together, even by dropship standards, and the roof was so low I doubted
we would be able to sit upright.

We had inserted by
saucer several times before - a ploy used to deceive the Loyalists and the FEA
who didn’t know that the unmanned craft could transport troops. A permanent
no-fly zone was enforced over the continent, allowing only dropships to operate,
so long as they remained under a hundred metres from the ground. The
restriction was enforced by the saucers, which patrolled the skies regularly.
Nobody would bat an eyelid as our saucer carried us to our drop zone, unloading
its cargo before continuing on patrol.

I had my men place on
all of their kit and sit inside the compartment, making sure we would all fit.
The load plan was made easier by the lack of our eighth trooper, even though
the compartment was still painfully cramped. We had to help each other buckle
in, one by one, and squeeze our bodies tightly together to allow the door to be
closed.

‘I love riding in
these things,’ Puppy said sarcastically, as the compartment filled with the
groans of crushed troopers.

I grabbed the release
latch, twisting it to the right to allow the door to be slid upward. Myers had
to push me to help get me out of my seat, and we all gave a unanimous sigh of
relief as we climbed back out of the saucer.

‘How long will the
ride be?’ Skelton asked me as we removed our weapons and equipment, placing it
neatly alongside the saucer.

‘Roughly one hour,
I’m told.’

The section groaned again
in chorus. An hour might not seem like a long time, but crammed into the saucer
even five minutes felt like an hour.

‘That’s gonna be
painful,’ Wildgoose moaned.

‘No shit,’ I replied,
then raised my voice to address the section. ‘Right, lads, let’s not waste any more
time. We could be waiting in this hangar for hours, or even days, so let’s get
comfortable. Get your thermal bags out and get your heads down.’

The section didn’t
need to be told twice, within seconds they were ripping their thermal bags out
of their patrol sacks, and taking their boots off to get comfortable on the
floor of the hangar. Nearby the rest of the platoon would be doing the same
thing, preparing for an indefinite wait. We all knew from past experience that
we could be left in the hangar for hours before being told that the operation
was cancelled. There was no point in waiting up.

‘You reckon we’ll go
in tonight?’ Puppy asked from where he stood beside me, watching the men
wriggle into their thermal bags.

I took a deep breath.
‘Yeah. I’m pretty sure we will.’

‘What makes you think
that?’

‘EJOC must be getting
pretty nervous with the Alliance hanging around close by, they’ll be telling
the brigade to do something quickly, before all hell breaks loose.’

‘You think the
Alliance could win if they invaded?’

I shrugged. ‘Not
sure, but I’m willing to bet that if they try to take the planet, both sides
will lose in the end.’

Puppy stared at me
blankly. ‘I don’t follow you.’

I smiled grimly.
‘China will be waiting right behind.’

I ran through burnt
out greenhouses and wilted crops, flames licking at my combats as I ran from
the advancing Chinese horde. Darts whizzed past my head, showering me with
sparks as they struck against the metal greenhouse frames. Driven on by sheer
terror, I ran toward the safety of the ditch and the rest of my section ahead
of me.

My legs were weak,
though. Somehow it was as though I was wading through treacle, and every step
seemed to barely move my body forward.

Run, Andy, run!

Bodies littered the
ground at my feet, their blood soaking into the red New Earth soil. Amongst
them was Climo, my old friend and protector, his face caved in by a Chinese
dart.

You need to get
away!

But there was no way
I could escape; the enemy were coming for me, their fire becoming ever more
accurate. No matter how hard I pumped at my legs, willing for them to drive me
forward, some invisible force held me back.

Terror swept over me,
consuming me like a cloud of black smoke as I realised that I had no chance.

Suddenly I found
myself in a puddle at the bottom of the ditch. Shocked by the sudden fall, I
frantically looked around me as the battle still raged. Somehow I had escaped,
but not for long. The Chinese were still coming.

I realised that most
of the section were dead, except for Browner. My old friend lay dying in the
mud, blood pulsing from his bloodied stumps. He whimpered, a horrible sound
that turned my stomach, and I crawled toward him to help.

Browner, no!
Please don’t die! Don’t leave me!

I never made it to
him, though, because a cold hand gripped me by the shoulder, stopping me dead.
I looked up.

Corporal Evans, my
section commander, was stood over me, weapon in hand. His body was soaked in
his own blood, which flowed freely from the gunshot wound on his chest. His
skin was rotten, and he stared through me with cold, dead eyes.

‘Get up, you
stupid little shit!’

‘Fuck!’ I jerked,
sitting bolt upright so fast that I nearly head-butted the trooper trying to
wake me. He jolted backward, almost losing his balance in surprise.

‘Andy, you alright?’

It was Myers, I
realised. He blinked at me.

I took a deep breath,
trying to calm my thumping heart. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

‘You were having a
nightmare.’

I brushed it off. ‘Yeah,
it must be the lack of sleep or something.’

It was a pretty lame
excuse, but Myers appeared to take it. ‘Fair enough. The boss just came in -
we’ve been told to load up.’

I propped myself
against a girder and glanced down at my datapad. It was just gone two in the
morning. ‘We’re going in, then?’

Myers nodded. ‘Apparently
the sergeant major’s multiple left an hour ago, so it looks like it.’

‘Right then, let’s
get the hangar lights on and get cracking.’

Although it lasted
less than an hour, our flight in the converted saucer was probably one of the
most unpleasant rides I had experienced in a long time. My legs throbbed as the
blood slowly left them, and my backside ached as my pelvis was crushed between the
solid metal door and Myers’s bony frame.

‘My arse is killing
me,’ Myers complained, his head lowered so that it didn’t bang against the
padded ceiling just above us.

‘Shut up, Myers,’
Puppy answered from the rear of the compartment, ‘you don’t even have an arse!’

‘Well something’s
hurting,’ the trooper replied sulkily, clearly not in the mood for exchanging
insults.

‘Shouldn’t be long
now,’ I reassured them.

My visor display
clock showed that we had been in flight for almost fifty minutes, darting
across the upper atmosphere like a supercharged can of sardines. Of course we
could have completed the journey in half the time, but that was all part of the
deception. The saucer was to act as though it was on patrol, as usual,
enforcing the no-fly zone over the Bosque as it darted randomly from one
location to the next in search of legitimate targets. It would be un-opposed,
of course. The last thing the advancing Loyalist army wanted was to give a
saucer just cause to attack. As long as they left the Union forces alone, they believed
that they could continue their assault into Edo without fear of reprisal. After
all, they had once fought alongside the Union as allies, why would they turn on
them now?

Skelton groaned,
straining against his straps as he tried to lift his backside away from his
seat. ‘This is pump! This must be the worst dropship ride ever!’

‘That’s because it’s
not a dropship,’ I corrected, irritated by the constant moaning, ‘and trust me,
I’ve had worse.’

Skelton wasn’t
convinced. ‘
Nobody
has had worse than this!’

‘Try taking a drop
without your seatbelt …’ I suggested, ‘… with the back door open.’

He quietened, and for
a moment he sat still. ‘Fair enough.’

‘We’re less than a
kilometre from the target,’ I announced, changing the subject as I turned my
attention to the rest of the section. ‘Remember, the drop zone will be marked
on your display. If for some reason you see nothing, aim to land at the
co-ordinates you received on orders. If you fail to link up one hour after the
drop, make your way to the emergency rendezvous. Don’t try to find us because
we won’t wait for you any longer. Understood?’