EDEN (The Union Series) (13 page)

The crosshair froze,
hovering out in the darkness. There was somebody out there; my visor was
picking up a heat signature.

'Blackjack.' I called
out the code word we had been given to identify us as friendly, which had been
taken from our call-sign indicator so it could easily be remembered.

The crosshair
remained still for several seconds, the only sound coming from the trees
hissing in the wind.

I waited for the
inevitable crack of gunfire, but nothing came.

At last, after ten
tense seconds, a voice answered just loudly enough for me to hear: 'Armageddon.'

I breathed a small
sigh of relief, my patrol wasn't about to be hacked to pieces by darts - at
least not yet.

'Advance one to be
recognised,' I instructed, and then waited.

After another brief
pause, the crosshair moved, and then changed from orange to red as it drew near
enough for my visor to identify the target as an FEA soldier. I presumed that
it was the liaison officer from the Presidential Guard.

The figure was no
more than ten metres away when I ordered him to halt again, giving me time to
take in the uniform and equipment. He was dressed almost entirely in Alliance
equipment, which was to be expected. The FEA used equipment left behind by the
Alliance ground forces, abandoned during their hasty withdrawal from Eden. He
clutched a rifle across his body in a non-threatening manner.

'What unit are you
with?’ I asked. I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it answer from him. In
the Bosque, you could never be too careful. Enemies of the Union lurked in
every corner.

‘Second Dropship
Battalion,’ the figure responded. It was a woman, I realised, speaking in
thickly accented English. ‘I am here to escort you back to my headquarters.’  

I had heard as much
as I needed to hear. 'Advance.'

The woman walked
right up to me, crouching close enough for us to talk quietly. She was indeed
Presidential Guard, I saw the eagle insignia just visible on her shoulder, and
a quick look at the rank badge on her armour confirmed that she was a captain.
Her tinted visor hid much of her face in the dark.

'You’re late,' I said
flatly.

She shrugged
indifferently. 'This could not be helped. We are at war.'

I thought to point
out that timings were critical, and not flexible, but decided against it. There
was no use in annoying our hosts before we even began. We were lucky they hadn't
decided to attack us instead.

'I am Captain Yulia Kristov
of the Presidential Guard,' she introduced herself, before gesturing into the
darkness behind her. 'I have brought my patrol here to escort you to the front
line.'

I followed her arm, seeing
nothing. I had no doubt that there were more of them out there, as clearly
Yulia wouldn’t have travelled on her own.

I remembered my
manners. ‘Lance Corporal Andy Moralee. So you will be our liaison officer?’

‘Yes,’ she answered,
as though it was a disappointment. ‘I would rather be fighting, but my
commanders want me to look after you instead.’

My jaw clenched as I
willed myself not to say anything. We didn’t need looking after, not by the
Presidential Guard anyway. Most of my men would sooner slit her throat from ear
to ear than follow her around. I hadn’t been involved in the guerrilla campaign
fought along the border between the Union and the Guard, having only arrived on
Eden a few months ago, but I knew that it had been vicious and bloody. Like the
Loyalists that gathered in the north, the Guard were happy to kill and maim
innocent civilians to achieve their aim. Control and terror went hand in hand
in the Bosque.

‘Shall we go, then?’
I asked gruffly.

‘Yes,’ Yulia replied,
‘follow me.’

We followed Yulia and
her FEA guides as they snaked through the undergrowth toward their company
headquarters. During the final part of our patrol the weather suddenly turned,
and the forest canopy hissed loudly as it was battered with rain and high
winds. Big droplets splashed down onto us, quickly soaking our combats.

We were lucky that
the weather hadn’t been so bad during our landing, I thought, the wind was so
powerful it was causing the trees to sway, but the mist was gone, giving us
good visibility in the dense vegetation beneath the canopy.

We were totally
reliant upon our escorts. I had no idea of where their headquarters was located
or the whereabouts of the Loyalist forces. If we lost eyes-on, then we would
have to stop and wait for them to come back, if they did at all.

‘Keep your eyes out,’
I ordered my men quietly. ‘Expect anything.’

We kept our weapons
raised as we patrolled, sweeping the darkness for any sign of the Loyalists, or
an FEA trap. I doubted the FEA would go to the trouble of escorting us only to
then hit us with an ambush, but anything was possible.

The patrol took us
through thick clusters of ferns, and skirted around old impact craters
overgrown with grass. I wondered if the craters were formed from old meteor
impacts from before the golden age of terraforming, or if they were in fact the
result of an old battle.

Eden had been ravaged
by war for over a century, from epic planet-wide battles fought between the
Union, Russia and the Alliance, to smaller provincial conflicts. During that
period, the original dream of creating a utopia away from Earth was lost, like
a beautiful painting drenched in blood. No man would ever walk the surface of
Eden without a respirator on his face, I decided, or a rifle in his hands.

Suddenly there was a
bright flash of light that lit the entire canopy. The section dropped to the
ground instinctively, as seconds later a mighty explosion echoed across the
forest.

‘What the hell was
that?’ Skelton asked.

There was another
flash, then another, each one followed seconds later by a thump that shook the
trees around us.

‘It’s the artillery
again,’ I said, my head turned to the source of the noise. ‘About a kilometre
away, maybe less.’

‘Is it for us?’

I shook my head. ‘No.
Highly unlikely.’

Seeing that my
section had stopped, Yulia walked back toward us, ignoring the continuing
barrage. The flashes lit her, revealing a hardened face beneath her visor that
even I found slightly intimidating.

‘The Loyalists have
been firing railgun artillery for several hours,’ she explained as she joined
us. ‘They think that they have located our headquarters and are trying to
destroy it.’

‘So that isn’t your
headquarters there?’ I asked as another shell detonated.

She casually lifted
her head and looked toward the source of the noise. ‘No. They are just wasting
ammunition.’

I shrugged. ‘Fair
enough.’

‘Are you ready to go
now?’

I bristled. Despite
her strong accent, I could swear that she was being condescending.

‘Yes, we’re good to
go.’

‘Good,’ she turned
back to the other escorts, signalling for them to carry on. I watched as the
small party of FEA patrolled off into the forest once more, irritated by the
way she had spoken to me.

‘They think they’re hard
as nails, don’t they?’ Myers observed, and I nodded.

‘We’ll find out soon
enough.’

It was still raining
when we arrived at the FEA battalion headquarters, despite the first slivers of
morning light appearing in the clouds. The headquarters was a collection of
tents, covered over with thermal sheeting, and then scattered with clods of earth
and ferns for camouflage. It was nothing special, but enough to hide them from
aerial observation. A few FEA soldiers moved about the tents conducting random
tasks, and in particular I noted one group working on an antennae mast that
stood almost as tall as the canopy. They were taking it down, which made sense.
After all, the FEA were about to switch onto the offensive, and their
headquarters couldn’t remain static for too long with the Loyalist artillery
trying to hit it.

Nearby I noticed a
platoon of FEA soldiers, their equipment soaked by the rain, looking as though
they too were preparing to move. They eyed us warily, some of them angrily,
wondering why a Union patrol had arrived in their midst. I wondered if anybody
had even told them that we were coming, half expecting one of them to raise his
rifle and start shooting.

I was about to
announce our arrival over the platoon net, but there was no need; the boss was
already there. Two of his team waited beside one of the tents, and I presumed that
he was inside with his signaller.

‘Alright?’ I asked
one of them as I approached, happy to see another Union trooper.

‘Yeah, apart from the
weather,’ he replied gloomily, lifting his head up toward the dark clouds high
above us. He then eyed our escorts warily. ‘Not so happy being here, either,’
he added.

It must be pretty
nerve wracking being in the platoon commanders group, I thought. Their escort
party had probably outnumbered them, and now they were split into two pairs,
each one surrounded by potentially dangerous FEA soldiers.

Yulia beckoned me
toward the nearest tent, and said, ‘Come with me.’

I patted Myers on the
shoulder. ‘Let’s go, then, mate.’

The Guard captain
looked alternately at each of us, apparently unhappy that I wasn’t going in
alone, saying curtly, ‘You do not need protection.’

I’ll be the judge of
that, I thought.

‘It’s standard
procedure,’ I explained calmly. ‘He’s just a runner in case I need to pass a
message.’

Yulia hesitated, she
clearly didn’t believe me. ‘Very well. The rest must stay outside.’

‘That’s fine. Puppy
will keep the lads outside.’

Yulia led us to the
tent, opening the outer airlock door and gesturing for us to follow her in. We
stepped inside cautiously, as though we were expecting a trap door to open
beneath us, or Yulia to pull out a knife. Without thinking, we left a natural
gap between us and the Guard captain, both facing her. There was no way she
couldn’t have noticed our defensive posture, but she didn’t say anything.

‘Your commander is
already in here,’ Yulia observed as she closed the door behind us, ‘and you
have another section on the way now?’

‘Yeah.’

There was a light
breeze that brushed against our combats, and a red light indicated that the
airlock filters were scrubbing the air, removing the toxins that made the Eden
atmosphere lethal to humans.

Finally, after an
awkward silence, the light changed to green and we made our way into the tent.

The Mr Barkley was
inside, stood in front of a large hologram of the Bosque with several officers,
most of them FEA but some of them from the Presidential Guard. His helmet and
respirator were tucked under one arm, and his face was screwed up in
concentration as he tapped information into his datapad. His signaller stood
nearby, scanning the tent for any sign of danger toward the platoon commander.

The other officers
jabbered at each other in their own language, in a heated debate about how to
stop the Loyalists from pouring across the river. My headset could barely
translate the argument, as they all seemed to be talking at once.

Mr Barkley spotted me
and smiled, raising a hand in greeting. ‘Ah, there you are. I was beginning to
get worried.’

I glanced at my visor
clock. Despite the late arrival of my liaison officer, I had still made it to
the headquarters on time. ‘I’m not late, Sir.’

‘I know, but things
are happening faster here than we expected. The Loyalists are on the move
again.’

I unclipped my helmet
and removed it, before pulling my respirator up away from my face. ‘They’re
trying to cross the river?’

‘Yes,’ the boss
affirmed, stretching out a finger to point toward a section of the Ghandi River.
‘I think they’re going to attempt to cross here. The sergeant major reported a
build-up of Loyalist soldiers early this morning.’

I studied the
holographic image of the Bosque, noting the highlands in the west, from which
the Ghandi River flowed, splitting the region into two as it made its way
toward Paraiso. I also noted the city of Dakar to the north, not far from the
original Edo-Europa border, which apparently was being used as a staging point
by the Loyalists. During our final confirmatory orders, the boss had explained
how the city was being used to house artillery and anti-aircraft batteries. In
order for Edo to restore its borders, Dakar would need to be re-taken.

‘So the sergeant major
crossed the river alright?’

‘Yes, he did.’ Mr
Barkley sounded genuinely relieved that his other multiple had made the river
crossing in good order. It was a dangerous task to conduct in the dark, even
without the Loyalist forces on the opposite side. Troopers could easily be
swept away if the drills weren’t carried out properly, and the Ghandi was a
very fast-flowing river indeed.