Noble Conflict (10 page)

Kaspar thought for a moment. ‘Why don’t the water management teams detect the drugs during their regular checks?’

Brother Simon chuckled. ‘They send their samples for analysis. We doctor the results before sending them back.’

‘But then, why  . . . ?’

Brother Simon stood up. ‘Guardian Wilding, I believe I’ve answered more than enough of your questions. And I’m only here telling you all this out of respect for your mother. I could’ve just had you transferred to some godforsaken outpost for the rest of your military career. Remember that.’ Brother Simon kept his tone light

‘Of course, sir. My apologies.’ Kaspar bit back the many other questions ready to spill off his tongue.

Brother Simon scrutinized Kaspar for a few moments. ‘We’ll be keeping an eye on you, Guardian Wilding. I think your parents would’ve been very proud. We foresee
great things for you, once you have some more experience under your belt. Now that you know there is more to keeping us safe than just patrolling with a stun rifle, I hope you will – how can I put this – temper your zeal?’

‘Yes, of course, sir.’

‘I shall be personally following your activities with a great deal of interest,’ smiled Brother Simon.

‘Yes, sir.’

The High Councillor exited the room, his smile the last to leave. Kaspar sat down on the edge of his bed, a frown digging a trench across the bridge of his nose. The idea of Brother Simon keeping tabs on him didn’t sit well with him at all.

More importantly, he was still trying to digest everything the High Councillor had told him, but it left a deeply unpleasant aftertaste in his mouth. The Crusaders had to have a festering hatred that ran marrow-deep for them to allow their Insurgents to even contemplate using nuclear and biological weapons against the Alliance. Hadn’t they learned anything from their own history? They’d tried to alter the shape of their lands, and as a consequence had rained down destruction on the entire planet. And having turned their homeland into a fiery wasteland, they then waged war against the Alliance to take by force that which didn’t belong to them – Alliance homes, Alliance land, Alliance lives. Decades later, they still thought lethal weapons would solve all their problems.

It was truly pathetic.

The Crusaders were beneath contempt and beyond stupid. No wonder Brother Simon kept stating that the Crusaders would never win. But their Insurgents had to know that the Alliance had the means to neutralize their chemical weapons, so why still bother with them?

Kaspar’s head was buzzing with questions. The lack of answers was giving him a headache.

Oh, crap! Voss!

‘4518 Wilding to 229 Voss.’ Kaspar activated his CommLink. ‘I’m on my way over to see you now, sir.’

‘Belay that, Wilding,’ Voss growled. ‘I no longer require your presence. Brother Simon has explained everything.’

Hell, but Voss sounded pissed.

‘Yes, sir,’ Kaspar replied.

Voss disconnected the call without another word. Kaspar could only hope that Brother Simon’s intervention hadn’t put Voss’s nose permanently out of joint. Voss was one guy who could make his existence a living hell.

The surviving narratives of our ancestors tell of the horror, the carnage wrought by those who, in their overriding arrogance, tried to reshape the very continents for their own gain. As a direct consequence of their actions, our planet screamed. The Earth itself fought back. Frequent earthquakes of unparalleled ferocity split the land and sea in both hemispheres. Increased volcanic activity baked the atmosphere. The very air we breathed and the water we drank became charged with chemicals and pollutants.

Thousands upon thousands of lives were lost to nature’s wrath. Many more died of famine, fear and panic.

Had mankind brought about its own extinction?

But the human survival instinct cannot be denied. Those who remained began to turn the tide. We, who had decried the acts of the East, worked together to establish a safe haven, a land and a future we could share. Thus the Alliance was born. But there were those amongst the Crusaders who tried to lay the responsibility for nature’s fury at our gates.

And having devastated their own lands, they sought refuge amongst us. We welcomed them, until it became clear that peaceful co-existence was not their goal. We had no choice but to remove them to the Badlands, giving them the tools and the equipment required for their survival. Our very existence was at stake. The wall built around our Capital City was for the protection of our people, and it was at this time that the Guardians – an elite fighting squad sworn to protect our citizens with their lives – was formed. The High Council decreed that our people of the Alliance deserved no less.

The Crusaders countered by training their own elite group, known as the Insurgents, to take what they felt should have
been theirs. But they will not win. God is on our side. We will prevail.

Extract taken from ‘The Origins of the Insurgency’ by Brother Telem

Kaspar sat with the rest of his watch in the Ready Room, waiting for the day’s duty assignments. He wasn’t holding his breath for anything good. It was probably only thanks to Brother Simon that he still had a job, but Voss was still punishing him for his expensive evening with Mac in Library Services and the ‘false alarm’ at the reservoir.

Dillon wasn’t happy either. Voss was making him share the pain for venturing an ill-judged opinion on a week of bullshit assignments.

‘I swear if I get another crap assignment because you’re still on the naughty list, I’m going to strangle you,’ Dillon growled.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Kaspar said. ‘Buy him a fruit basket?’

‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ said Janna brightly. ‘He hates brown-nosers almost as much as he hates screw-ups.’

‘Rindt,’ shouted Voss.

‘Yes, sir,’ Janna shot back.

‘You’re on the Rapid Response team. Check in with Laird for a full briefing.’

‘Yes, sir!’ Janna’s grin was so wide the top of her head was in danger of dropping off.

‘Wilding, Greenhill.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Kaspar and Dillon chorused together.

‘Here it comes,’ muttered Dillon.

‘You two will be spending a couple of days up at Station Rose investigating some suspicious activity. Do you think you can do that without me giving you a typed summary of your job description?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Kaspar sighed inwardly while Dillon’s glare gave him third-degree burns. Everyone else laughed or groaned sympathetically.

Dillon wasn’t happy and Kaspar could hardly blame him. Station Rose was right out on the edge of the volcanic Badlands. It was named after Petra Rose, the famous agricultural scientist, and its ‘fragrance’ was well known. Its close proximity to endless supplies of geo thermal energy at the edge of the Badlands and its great distance from anything else made it the perfect site for a bio-conversion facility – or as Dillon called it, ‘a crap farm’. It produced a large amount of high-quality, detoxified, nutrient-rich fertilizer for the Alliance farms, but the hi-tech did nothing to disguise the fact that it was several hectares of settling ponds: literally shallow pools of manure festering in the sun. Add to that the sulphurous fumes wafting off the Badlands, and you had a duty station that every Guardian would chew off their own arms to avoid.

‘Don’t even speak to me, Kas,’ said Dillon as Voss dismissed the shift. ‘Janna gets to ride shotgun on a cavalry wagon and we get to investigate a shit farm. Thank you so very much.’

The two had to run a gauntlet of remarks on their way to the transports.

‘Glad to see you getting your hands dirty again, Kas.’

‘You two gonna sniff out some trouble?’

‘Do you think the shit will hit the fan?’

Dillon replied to all with a surly ‘Bugger off.’ Kaspar sighed and trudged wearily after his seething friend. This was going to be a
long
day.

‘It’s my turn to drive,’ said Kaspar, already making his way to the driver’s seat of the hovercar.

Dillon shoved him out of the way and jumped behind the wheel. ‘In your dreams, Wilding.’ He scowled. ‘I’m driving, and don’t even think about arguing with me.’

One look at Dillon’s expression and kaspar headed for the passenger’s side without saying a word. It wouldn’t take much for Dillon to jump out of the car and try to kick his arse, his friend was that annoyed. Kaspar could only hope that the ride to Station Rose would help Dillon to mellow out a bit.

The one good thing about Station Rose – and it was the only thing – was the view on the way there. The spectacular panorama of the high volcanoes in the north, through to the rich farming land in the west and the golden desert to the east, never got old. Instead of skirting the volcanic wilderness by going north and then east,
Kas and Dillon decided to save themselves three hours by ‘cutting the corner’ and actually entering the Badlands. Travelling by hovercar was really the only way to travel over the Badlands. Everything else either bogged down, sank without trace, melted or caught fire. It was hot in the open cockpit but at least the wind rushing past made it bearable – just. The smell was bad enough to require the use of respirators, though.

By the time they were nearing their destination, Kaspar was grateful that Dillon had finally transferred his wrath away from him and back to Voss, where he felt it belonged.

‘That guy is such an arse,’ Dillon fumed, his voice distorted by his gas mask. ‘Sending us all the way to the crap capital of the north to investigate “suspicious activity”. What a load of—’

‘What the  . . . ?’ Kaspar caught sight of a glint in the sunlight.

‘What is it?’ asked Dillon.

Kaspar shouldered his rifle and squinted through the scope, using it as a telescope.

‘Hey, Dillon,’ he said. ‘I think there’s someone over there, about a click thataway.’ He pointed to their right.

‘Who’d be stupid enough to be out here?’ Dillon frowned. ‘There’s nothing to see and even less to do.’

‘Well, I definitely saw something. Let’s check it out.’

‘Oh, hell.’ Dillon shook his head. ‘We can’t even drive to our next assignment without messing it up. Voss will disembowel us if we call in another false alarm.’

Dillon had said ‘we’ instead of ‘you’, for which Kaspar was grateful. Dillon really was a good mate.

‘That’s why we’re going to check it out first without calling it in, and if it turns out to be nothing  . . . well, I won’t tell if you don’t,’ Kaspar replied.

‘We are here to investigate suspicious activity,’ Dillon pointed out with a slow smile. ‘And besides, if we do call it in and Voss goes ballistic, it won’t have been a wasted journey. We can just apply for permanent jobs as bio-conversion technicians.’ He swung the hovercar off to the right and headed in the direction Kaspar had indicated.

Kaspar was still looking through the scope, scanning for signs of life, when he glimpsed a flash of light. Dropping his rifle slightly, he tried to spy what had caught his attention. Kaspar glanced at Dillon, but Dillon’s peripheral vision was hampered by his respirator. Something was travelling at speed in their direction.

‘
Grena
—’

Kaspar had no chance to finish his warning. A massive explosion at the right rear of the car slewed it violently to the right, then to the left. A sheet of flame shot forward, and Kaspar felt the heat right through the armoured back of his bucket seat. The car flipped over completely. He was thrown out of the cockpit and flew several metres through the air before tumbling across the ground to land with a series of bone-jarring thuds. He finally came to rest on a bed of broken, jagged rocks.

Kaspar wasn’t sure how long he just lay there with his head ringing and every atom of his body hurting. But
slowly his brain got back in the game. There was a checklist they had been taught to go through in basic combat training for just such a contingency as this.

‘Weapon  . . . Cover  . . . Injuries  . . . Situation  . . .’

Or was it: ‘Cover  . . . Situation  . . . Weapon  . . . Injuries?’

Kaspar tried to focus on something besides his pounding head and the screaming pain radiating from every part of his aching body.

How many attackers?

What weapons? Well, an RPG for a start. The way that thing had scored a direct hit against  . . .

Reality arrived like a kick in the teeth.

‘Dillon  . . .’ Kaspar struggled to his knees and looked around. No sign of his mate. Kaspar had his head at the swivel, trying to spot where Dillon had taken cover.

‘Where are you?’ he muttered. Maybe by that rock outcrop only a few metres away? It would provide great cover. ‘DILLON?’

No answer.

Kaspar looked back at the burning hovercar. He dragged himself across the sand, digging his elbows and boots into the scorching earth to pull himself along. He made it to the upturned car and crawled round to the driver’s side. Acrid smoke billowed around the hovercar like an angry fog. At first Kaspar didn’t see him, but some of the smoke cleared and there was Dillon, slumped backwards in his seat, his eyes closed. Immediate relief was
quickly swamped with intense concern. The hovercar might explode at any second.

‘Dillon, hang on, mate. I’ll get you out.’

Kaspar reached in, grabbed Dillon’s arm and pulled, but he couldn’t shift him. Dillon’s seat belt was still in place. Kaspar clicked it open and tried again. Dillon still didn’t budge. Kaspar needed a better grip. Pulling off his gloves, he reached further and got his arms around Dillon’s chest.

‘Come on, you bastard. You’re not helping.’

Kaspar heaved as best he could. He altered his stance slightly so that he could use his good leg to apply some force against the body of the hovercar, and readjusted his grip on Dillon again. And then Kaspar realized why Dillon wasn’t helping, why he wasn’t moving.

Dillon had a hole the size of a fist in the back of his skull.

Kaspar slumped down next to the hovercar beside Dillon’s body. He couldn’t move. He just stared at Dillon, too shocked to feel anything but numb. If he stayed very still and closed, then slowly opened, his eyes then maybe, just maybe this would turn out to be nothing more than a nightmare. The very worst nightmare of his life. Kaspar began to cough, spasmodically at first but it rapidly got worse. The smells around him were beginning to permeate – sulphur from the volcanic vents, burned plastic and rubber from the smouldering car  . . . and blood. The unmistakable metallic odour of the blood that was now pooling darkly underneath Dillon’s ruined head and staining his back. Kaspar was sickly hypnotized by Dillon’s head. He could see bone and brain. People shouldn’t look like that. Dillon shouldn’t look like that. His friend had always been so neat and tidy – he would hate to see himself in this state.