EDEN (The Union Series) (19 page)

Suddenly Makito’s
hand flicked toward a knife he kept on his belt, but Yulia spotted the motion,
grasping his wrist before he reached the blade. Skelton and Myers looked on
nervously, their weapons half-raised.

My eyes narrowed as I
regarded the young bodyguard. ‘You’re a lucky man, mate. She just saved your
life.’

Makito’s eyes burned
with fury. He knew what I had said; his headset would have translated for him.

‘Makito misunderstood
you,’ Yulia said after a tense few moments, glaring at the young Guardsman. ‘He
thought that you were threatening the major, but you were not. Sometimes the
translation does not come through properly.’

Makito relaxed, and
his hand moved away from the knife. He looked away angrily.

Gunfire continued to
be exchanged nearby, and I returned my attention to the battle. ‘How are they
doing?’

‘The platoon
commander is holding his ground,’ Yulia answered, ‘but the major wants him to
attack. The platoon commander is afraid.’

I couldn’t blame him,
I thought.

I rapped my knuckles
against my visor thoughtfully, weighing up my options. Clearly the FEA platoon,
untrained and ill-equipped, would be swept aside by the Loyalists. I had no
artillery, and no saucers to aid them. All I had was me, my fire team, and however
many child soldiers they had left. It would have to do.

I looked up to the
heavens and cursed, then beckoned for Myers and Skelton to follow.

‘What are you
planning to do?’ Yulia asked as I began to move forward in a half-crouch,
keeping my head as low as possible. A spray of darts struck a tree nearby,
hacking chips out of its trunk.

‘I don’t know yet,’ I
replied curtly, not turning back to look at her. ‘I need to see what’s going on
first.’

I dropped a crosshair
onto my position and spoke to Puppy on the section net, explaining the
situation to him. ‘There’s my location, mate. I’m moving forward to take a
look. Can you move Wildgoose so he has eyes into the forest from where you
are?’ 

‘Should be able to,’
Puppy replied. ‘It might take a few minutes, though. We’re trying not to get
spotted.’

‘No worries. Where
are the rest of the Loyalists?’

There was a pause, ‘still
a kilometre away. I think they’re struggling to move through the marsh.’

We found the
embattled FEA platoon pinned along a natural fold in the ground by a withering
hail of Loyalist darts. Red crosshairs flickered on my visor display as the
Loyalists popped up from their cover a few hundred metres away, firing a couple
of darts before ducking back down again. I heard the distinctive roar of Vulcan
as one of the suits hammered the undergrowth, hoping to catch anyone
unfortunate enough to be in the open.

‘Shit the bed …’
Myers exclaimed, as we peered over a fallen log at the fire fight ahead of us.

I squinted, searching
amongst the flickering crosshairs for any sign of the suits. My visor display
would mark the machines if it could spot them, but I couldn’t see anything.
They were probably firing from cover somewhere to the rear, just in case the
FEA attempted to use their missiles. Fat chance of that, I thought, the silly
bastards didn’t have anything at all.

‘What do you think?’
Skelton asked, grimly surveying the battle in front of us.

‘They’re pinned by
the suits,’ I answered, ‘but I can’t identify them through the trees.’

If we could spot
them, so could one of our smart missiles, but the Loyalists wouldn’t make it so
easy. We could tell the missile to search for suits before we launched it, and
then hope for the best, but it was almost certainly a waste. It would strike a
tree long before it found its target.

There was only one
way to do it, I decided. We couldn’t move any further forward, or we would risk
being pinned down with them as well. We also couldn’t move around to the left,
for fear of being exposed on the edge of the forest. Instead we would have to
circle around the Loyalists, moving deeper into the forest and hooking around
to the right until we found the suits. It was risky - we would be separating
further from Puppy and his fire team - but we were trained to work as
independent units, and if we did nothing, the FEA platoon wouldn’t last long at
all.

I quickly explained
my plan to Puppy, and then turned to Yulia. ‘Tell Bhasin to hold that platoon
where it is. I will deal with the damned suits.’

‘He has already
managed to get the platoon commander to flank to the right as well,’ Yulia
argued.

‘What are they gonna
do?’ I scolded. ‘Throw insults at them? Follow me!’

We dropped back,
moving away from the battle, before running deeper into the forest, ripping
through ferns and bushes in our haste. Darts cracked overhead, and occasionally
a spray of Vulcan struck the trees above us, missing us by metres. I tried to
use the folds in the ground to stay as low as possible, weaving my way around
trees and rocks.

As we circled around
the battle, I caught a glimpse of several FEA soldiers grouped together as they
crept around in the same direction as us.

‘There they are,’
Yulia pointed, but I carried on, pushing further away from the cluster of child
soldiers.

The noise of the main
battle grew quieter, giving way to the roar of several Vulcan cannons firing in
bursts. The suits were nearby, firing through the trees at targets identified
to them by the Loyalist soldiers fighting ahead of them.

I slowed my pace
dramatically, creeping through the ferns whilst using one hand to brush the
foliage out of my way. I then turned back and held a single finger against my
visor where my lips would be.
Be quiet!

Everyone nodded,
understanding that we were drawing near to the suits. 

Suddenly the forest
exploded with gunfire behind us, and we all dropped to the ground. Makito took
up aim with his rifle, but was quickly stopped by Yulia.

‘It is not us,’ she
hissed at him.

We lay there for a
few seconds, listening as the small group of FEA we had seen fought their own
miniature battle against the Loyalists. I wondered if both sides had attempted
to flank the other, meeting in the middle by accident. Just as well I had
chosen to stay away from them, I thought.

With an upward wave
of my hand we rose, continuing to creep through the undergrowth as the fire
fight died behind us.

The Loyalists had
probably been successful in killing the tiny group of attacking FEA, I decided,
since the young soldiers probably didn’t even know how to operate their rifles
properly. It was like lambs to the slaughter, all orchestrated by Major Bhasin
from the rear. Like a sick, twisted puppet master, he would happily allow them
all to die as long as it suited the plan cooked up by the Guard. I knew that
troopers were expendable, but those poor wretches were like meat thrown into a
grinder, and the thought of it twisted my stomach. Their one chance was in me
destroying those suits.

Something flickered
orange on my visor display, and I quickly fell to one knee, motioning for the
others to follow me down.

An orange crosshair
marked possible targets that my visor couldn’t properly identify, usually
things that appeared out of the ordinary, or unexpected changes in thermal
signature that couldn’t be explained by the computer housed within my
respirator. Orange was good enough for me. We were in a forest, but it was
highly unlikely that my visor had mistaken a tree for a target.

I looked behind me
and pointed at Myers, motioning for him to close up to me.

The young trooper
blinked fiercely as he crawled through the ferns, stopping right next to me so
that I could unclip the launcher from his daysack.

Just as I did so
there was a mighty roar as the nearby suit opened fire on an unseen target,
servos whirring as it moved in between the trees. I smiled; there was
confirmation.

Once it had been
unclipped, I handed Myers the launcher, and the young trooper kept his body low
as he carefully set it up onto his shoulder.

‘Silent,’ he
whispered. ‘Armoured suit in trees.’

A tiny light lit up on
the launcher, telling him without a sound that the missile understood its
mission.

I looked back at the
others, who remained crouched in the undergrowth. I silently patted the
launcher, then patted the grenade launcher under my rifle.
Launcher fires
first, then grenades after.

They nodded - it was
a simple plan - it needed to be.

I held up my hand in
front of Myers’s face, counting down the seconds as the suit fired again into
the forest. 
Five, four, three, two, one … launch!

Myers burst out from
the ferns, his launcher already on his shoulder and prepped to fire. With a
puff of smoke and a mighty bang he fired, and less than a second later there
was a second bang as the missile broke through the suit’s armour, detonating
inside it. Far too powerful for its intended target, the missile sent great
chunks of metal flying through the trees as it blew the suit to pieces.

I emerged beside
Myers, instantly firing a string of three high explosive grenades toward the
stricken suit. I didn’t have the time to identify any additional targets,
instead I fired them blindly in the hope that the targeting computers inside
the tiny missiles managed to find something instead. At the same time the
others followed, Alliance rifles and Union mammoth gun firing together and
hammering the forest with darts.

‘Contact!’ I
announced to Puppy, dropping another blue crosshair to show him where I was. ‘One
suit destroyed!’

‘Roger! I’ve got eyes
on another on the edge of the forest, just trying to move Wildgoose to get a
shot!’

There was another
suit in front of us, I saw, just ten metres beyond the first. It spun around to
face its new threat, its Vulcan cannon spraying a wall of darts at the guided
grenades fired by my launcher. It managed to hit the first two, causing them to
explode in mid-air in front of it, but the third managed to get close enough to
blow it off its feet. The mighty machine toppled over, claw-like feet flying up
in the air as it virtually went head over heels. It would have looked quite
comical if we had been somewhere else.

Every weapon was
firing at the suit as it struggled to stand back up. Designed only as a mobile
weapons platform, the suit wasn’t as agile as a human being, and with so many
darts striking its armoured hull it was unable to right itself.

Myers was still
reloading his launcher, but I decided I didn’t need it. The key to success in
battle was the rapid exploitation of perceived weaknesses in the enemy, and I
saw that second of weakness.

‘Skelton!’ I hollered
over the din. ‘I’ll move, you cover!’

‘Roger!’ Skelton
didn’t stop firing, the magnets in his mammoth screaming as it chewed through
its ammunition box.

I bounded forward
toward the fallen suit, before taking a knee again and resuming firing. ‘Move!’
I yelled.

Skelton didn’t need
to be told, he was already moving, charging through the undergrowth until he
was in line with me. As soon as he was firing I picked myself up again, running
ever closer to the suit.

A dart is
significantly more powerful at close range, able to penetrate through several
centimetres of armour with relative ease. As we bounded closer to the suit, one
firing while the other moved, its fight to stand up became even more difficult.

Finally realising
what was happening, the operator made one final attempt to fight back, pointing
his Vulcan cannon toward us.

He was too late.
Skelton fired a burst along the length of the arm from less than five metres
away, destroying the complex magnets and machinery that enabled it to fire.

I bounded right up to
the suit and fired directly into its chest. The dart went in, but it never came
out, filling the occupant with tens of holes as it bounced around inside,
before finally losing energy.  The machine went limp.

‘Pretty rubbish,
these things,’ Skelton said as I stepped down from the suit.

I flicked my head
toward the FEA platoon. ‘Try telling them that.’

I heard a crack from
somewhere ahead of me, then my visor flashed orange as I caught a glimpse of
something big falling over on the edge of the forest, hitting the ground with a
thump.

‘That’s another suit
down!’ Puppy announced triumphantly. Wildgoose had destroyed a third suit, most
likely by aiming for the knee. Even at a distance, the high-powered darts from
the Orion would penetrate the suit’s armour with ease, and a single well-aimed
shot to the knee would break the joint and cause it to topple. The act was made
even more brutal because the wearer’s leg was
inside
the suit leg. I
swore I could hear somebody screaming.

The noise of the
battle between the remaining Loyalists and the FEA intensified.

‘Let’s get out of
here,’ I ordered, and we both ran back toward the others as fast as our legs
would allow us to move.