EDEN (The Union Series) (28 page)

The Loyalist soldiers
in the bunker had no time to react. Within five seconds of our charge, we had
already identified their position, and Skelton dropped to one knee to fire a
burst of darts straight into the weapon slits.

As he fired, Myers
and I continued our charge, sliding the last few metres through the mud.

‘Stay down!’ I hissed
at him, drawing a grenade from my pouches and setting it to only one second - I
didn’t want the enemy inside the bunker to throw it back.

I could hear the
confused shouts of the Loyalists inside the bunker, just as I tossed the
grenade inside and rolled away.

No sooner had my
headset beeped in warning then the grenade exploded, the blast rattling my
bones. Smoke poured out of the bunker, and I knew without a doubt that the two
men inside it had died.

Nevertheless, I stuck
my barrel into the bunker, identifying two lifeless corpses in the dark. I
fired a couple of darts into each to confirm that they were dead.

‘Position clear!’ I
shouted, picking myself up and taking up a fire position behind the bunker,
using its sandbag walls for protection. A spray of darts struck the far side of
the bunker, and I ducked out of the way as chunks of concrete flew overhead.

‘Contact front!’
Skelton hollered, just as he and Yulia opened fire onto a position beyond us.

There was another
burst of gunfire to my right, and as I looked I saw Corporal Abdi’s section
attacking a bunker a few hundred metres away, the flash of their weapons
flickering in the dark. The Loyalists were up and alert now, but they were
already on the back foot, under attack from all directions.

Myers crashed against
the bunker beside me, his breathing ragged as he scanned for the next target.

‘Shit the bed! That
was mental!’ he exclaimed, blinking furiously.

I ignored him.
Lifting my head I quickly spotted a dark, square shadow in the mist another
thirty metres away, its weapon slits flickering with light as the occupants
returned fire. It was another bunker, of course - there was always a depth
position. After all, depth was a principle of defence, the idea being to soak
up our momentum until our attack came to a halt. We needed to make sure that
didn’t happen, or our small platoon could quickly become overwhelmed.

I quickly dropped a
crosshair on the position.

‘Charlie!’ I
hollered. ‘Reference my mark! Rapid … FIRE!’

Like a well-oiled
machine, the weapons of the fire team switched in an instant, striking the bunker
in a hail of gunfire and suppressing the occupants inside.

‘Puppy!’ I called on
the net. ‘Launch on the right flank, and be aware of Corporal Abdi on your
right! Stand by for grenades!’

‘Roger!’

I fired a single
smoke grenade at the bunker, watching as the guided weapon veered through the
trees to detonate on top of the crosshair. The instant cloud of hot smoke it
produced added extra shock for the occupants of the bunker, whilst at the same
time obscuring it as Puppy moved around the flank.

I didn’t need to wait
long before I saw his fire team bounding through the ferns and bushes, hooking
around to the right of the bunker. Normally I would have switched with him and
taken the assault myself, but I trusted Puppy, knowing that he could do as good
a job as me. Switching commanders around merely slowed down the assault.

Puppy dropped off two
of his men as he made his final approach to the bunker, and they dropped down
to the ground to give him cover against counterattack. Within seconds they
opened fire, identifying more positions deeper in amongst the trees.

My own fire team had
become redundant, with Puppy ahead of us, and Corporal Abdi conducting his own
attack to my right. I didn’t want to close-up right away, though, wary of
bunching up onto a position that hadn’t yet been taken.

‘Watch the left,’ I
ordered Myers, and then turned to where Skelton and Yulia lay in a dip in the
ground. ‘As soon as Puppy takes his bunker, we bound forward!’

‘OK!’ Skelton
replied, and Yulia nodded.

I hoped that Skelton
was managing to keep watch on Yulia – I still found her presence in the section
unsettling.

Puppy crawled up to
the bunker unopposed, pausing for less than a second to draw his grenade,
before tossing it into the bunker. I heard the warning beep as they dived out
of the way and the bunker slits lit with a flash of orange.

‘Position clear!’
Puppy shouted, firing wildly into the bunker as he did so.

‘Skelton, we’ll move
first!’ I called out, quickly checking that my pouches were closed and ducking
into cover. Myers did the same.

‘Roger!’ Skelton
acknowledged.

‘Myers, move!’ We
burst out from behind the bunker, bounding toward where Puppy and his fire team
engaged more targets deeper into the forest.

We ran no further
than ten metres, taking up fire positions and waiting for Skelton and Yulia to
move up alongside us. The process continued, allowing for us to close with
Puppy without sacrificing our ability to defend ourselves.

Just as we drew up to
the left side of Puppy’s fire team, the forest flashed as a large missile
launched from the Loyalist burrows ahead of us, breaking through the canopy and
screaming into the sky. Several more missiles launched from across the forest,
illuminating the mist with an orange glow. I wondered what they were firing at,
since none of the FEA dropships would move until we gave the word that the
anti-aircraft batteries had been destroyed. I put it down to desperation.

I threw myself to the
ground, scrambling into a small, shallow stream that cut a wound through the
forest. It was little more than a trickle, but it afforded a small amount of
cover.

‘Down!’ I shouted,
not that Myers needed encouragement. He dived into the tiny stream, and then
crawled into a position to fire.

Puppy’s fire team
were exchanging fire with a group of Loyalists who had emerged to defend the
entrances to their burrow. They didn’t have a chance. As I watched, several
guided grenades detonated amongst them - a mixture of smoke and high explosive
that showered them in phosphor and shrapnel.

I didn’t wait for Skelton
and Yulia to arrive. The moment was there; the enemy was reeling and their
weakness was exposed.

‘Myers!’ I bellowed,
my outstretched hand marking the burrow entrance as another missile hurtled up
into the sky.

Myers turned to see the
crosshair on his own display. ‘Is that it?’

No shit it was. ‘Yeah!
Smart missile!’

Myers knew what to
do. He snatched the launcher from his back and threw it onto his shoulder. ‘Thirty
metres, open hole on ground!’ he cried. The launcher bleeped, announcing that
it had heard and understood the instruction. The targeting computer within the
missile worked out from a couple of words exactly what was required. He then took
a quick glance over his shoulder to confirm that nobody was behind the
launcher, and yelled, ‘Firing!’

With a whoosh of air
and a belch of flame, the missile leapt out of the launcher before its main
rocket ignited, driving it toward the target. It weaved in between the trees
with near impossible agility, before disappearing into the burrow with a puff
of smoke and dust.

The ground thumped
beneath us, and a pillar of earth erupted from the burrow entrance, hurling
chunks of rock and soil high into the air before they fell back to the ground
like hail stones.

It was a good strike.
Nothing could have survived that blast from within the confines of the burrow,
I thought, with or without a respirator. The overpressure created by the
missile would have been devastating. Nevertheless, I knew that I had to confirm
the kill, and I turned to check that Skelton and Yulia had completed their
bound.

‘Puppy, I’m going to
assault, give me rapid in five!’ I shouted, and then turned to my fire team. ‘Prepare
to move!’

‘Prepare to move!’
The message repeated.

I looked at Puppy,
whose men continued to fire into the stunned Loyalists dotted around the
burrow.

‘Three, two, one,
rapid … FIRE!’

The noise of the
battle suddenly intensified as Puppy’s fire team unleashed everything they had.

‘On me!’ I ordered,
scrambling to my feet. We sprinted the last twenty metres up to the smoking
entrance, ignoring the darts whizzing through the trees nearby. Hopefully it
was mostly our darts that I could hear, and not those of the Loyalists.

‘Firing!’ Somebody
shouted from behind me, and there was a second whoosh as another smart missile
was fired into the trees. I didn’t turn to look, though, I knew that Puppy had
probably spotted another burrow, or some other target worthy of his smart
launchers. He would keep the enemy suitably harassed whilst I went in for the
kill.

I drew a smoke
grenade as I ran toward the yawning burrow entrance, setting the timer to two
seconds. As soon as I was near enough I tossed the grenade, watching as it
tumbled down the steep slope toward the launcher and its crew buried below. My
headset beeped in warning.

‘Grenade!’

The remainder of my
fire team, waiting behind me in preparation for the assault, fired their
weapons toward other targets in the forest.

Another thump and the
burrow entrance belched glowing smoke, as though it were the throat of some
fire-breathing beast.

‘Let’s go!’

I scrambled down the
tunnel, half-running, half-sliding, my head lowered so that I didn’t hit my
helmet on the roof.

Visibility in the
burrow was less than five metres. Glowing ashes floated through the smoke,
settling onto the scorched ground like a carpet of lava. The soil beneath my
boots cracked like glass as my fire team fanned out of the tunnel entrance,
weapons raised to finish off anybody who had somehow survived the inferno.

Skelton stopped close
to the entrance, so as not to break our intercom relay to the surface.
Underneath the ground our net would struggle to pass messages without line of
sight.

I could make out the
shape of the launcher in the middle of the burrow, or at least what was left of
it. The remains of the tracked weapon platform burned, but the missile tubes
were missing, blown into chunks of twisted metal that lay scattered across the
ground around it. Wires dangled from the ceiling, dripping with blobs of molten
insulation.

Without lowering my
rifle from my shoulder, I gestured to Myers to take the left side of the
cavern. We passed rapidly either side of the launcher, both disappearing into
the smoke. Thankfully my visor could identify his location now that the section
net was back online, removing the danger of me shooting him by accident.

‘Puppy’s coming
down,’ Skelton informed me. I heard the sound of boots sliding down the steep
entrance slope, but didn’t turn to look.

Just as I passed the
launcher, a terrible scream echoed about the cavern as Skelton opened fire at
something obscured by the smoke. Surprised, I took aim and fired in the same
direction, adding to the din.

‘What are you
shooting at?’ I yelled, as the cavern continued to echo. My question was
answered as I advanced along down the tunnel. A hideously burnt man was propped
against a wall, his equipment fused into glistening red skin.

I ignored the sound
of Myers retching. ‘Skelton, Yulia, close in!’

The man, I noticed,
had died beside another tunnel - one which undoubtedly linked the burrow together
with another.

‘One-One-Charlie,
room clear,’ I passed across the platoon net. ‘One tunnel.’

I took a knee at the
entrance to the tunnel, just as Yulia and Skelton closed in behind me. Myers
looked a little dazed, and I realised that he probably hadn’t seen many dead
men so close up, especially not one so gruesome.

I grabbed the young
trooper by the arm and yanked him into position in front of me, ready to
assault.

‘Get a grip,’ I
scolded as I drew another grenade. I chose fragmentation this time, deciding that
any more smoke would leave us completely blind.

‘Shit the bed, that’s
minging …’ Skelton breathed from behind me.

Even I had to admit
it was a pretty horrible sight. My eyes flicked to the mouth of the burnt
corpse, where skin had melted away to expose his jaw. Loyalist or Guardsman, I
thanked God that he wasn’t alive. 

‘Send a mark on the
tunnel,’ the platoon commander ordered over the net. He needed to know where
the tunnel went, just in case we accidentally attacked another of our own
sections. With a battle on the surface as well as underground, it was easy to
become disorientated.

I reached my hand
around the corner of the tunnel just far enough to point my finger, managing to
place a crosshair further up the tunnel. The information was passed to Mr
Barkley via the platoon net, relaying from headset to headset until it was out
of the burrow.

Managing the battle
that still raged on the surface, the platoon commander responded almost
instantly. ‘Roger, happy with that, your Delta fired a missile into the same
location. I have eyes onto the entrance.’