EDEN (The Union Series) (15 page)

We mounted up, each
trooper taking his place while Yulia showed him how to buckle his belt.

‘You will have to
hold on to your weapons,’ she warned. ‘They will not fit into our racks.’

‘Well, we’ll just
have to pray that we don’t go into a spin,’ I answered gruffly as I clipped
myself into my seat, taking the time to adjust my straps to hold me in place.
Much to my amusement I found that their seats were slightly more comfortable
than ours, and the compartment was slightly more spacious. Typical, I thought,
the rag-tag FEA had a better dropship than we did!

Yulia and her
bodyguard took their seats across from me. Unlike Makito, who looked slightly
uneasy inside the compartment, the FEA captain quickly buckled her straps
together and racked her rifle like she had done so a thousand times before. She
had been in the Guard for a long while, I figured, perhaps even since the war,
which made her little older than me.

‘We will be in flight
for only a few minutes,’ she said to us all, ‘so do not get too comfortable.’

‘We know the score.
Let’s do it.’

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The Relief in Place

I leapt from the
dropship ramp, my boots squelching as they landed in soft, wet mud. We had been
dropped into a kilometre-wide stretch of marshland that separated the forest
from the Ghandi River. Intersected by a network of tributary rivers that cut
through the wall of trees behind us, the marsh was carpeted with thick grass
and reeds that grew well above waist height. Far to the west were the highlands
from which the Ghandi collected, towering high above the Bosque.

I brushed through the
grass to look around the side of the dropship, using its hull as cover as I
surveyed the battlefield along the length of the river to the north.

'Let’s go!' I yelled,
pointing with my outstretched arm for the section to peel outward into a line
facing the river.

I didn't turn to
watch them do it, I could hear the rustle of grass and the splash of muddy
water behind me as troopers bounded from the dropship and hurried into
position.

We were a few hundred
metres shy of the contact battle, concealed only by a few bushes and a thick
cloud of smoke that drifted over the marsh. I knew that the smoke had been
dropped by the warship orbiting somewhere kilometres above us in order to give
cover for the FEA relief. I could make out figures in amongst the smoke a few
hundred metres away, locked into a fire fight with an unseen opponent.
Presumably the FEA were exchanging fire with Loyalist soldiers somewhere over
the river. I noticed a dropship nearby, scorched and half-buried in the mud,
and I quickly recognised that it was of Russian design, and bore Loyalist
markings.

Suddenly a dart
whizzed overhead, and I ducked my head instinctively. I doubted that anybody
had spotted me through the smoke, since I could barely see friendly soldiers,
let alone enemy, but whether the enemy could see me or not made no difference.
His darts could still kill me. 

The marsh was flat
and featureless, and the only cover it offered was at the bottom of the smaller
rivers that meandered through it. We would be hard-pressed to find a route that
didn’t risk us being hit by stray gunfire, and even harder pressed to find a
route that didn’t involve getting soaked.

I looked to the right
of the dropship to see that the section had completed their dismount, having
formed a near perfect line with ten metre spaces between each trooper in order
to stay spread out. A gang of troopers bunched together made a juicy target, especially
to a nearby smart missile.

Breaking cover from
behind the dropship, I dashed through the long grass behind the section line
and found the gap that they had left for me. As soon as I took a knee the
dropship lifted away from the grass, its ramp already closing. It shot
rearward, darting between trees and bushes in an effort to remain concealed.

Ahead of us the first
company were conducting their relief in place as fast as they could, taking
over from a unit that were close to breaking point. I watched as tens of FEA
soldiers withdrew in ragged lines to our left, squelching through the marsh
toward the safety of the forest behind us. Even from a distance they looked
broken. Some of them were limping, others staggered beneath the weight of their
dead and wounded. I remembered how young some of the FEA soldiers were - far
younger than I had been when I was conscripted into the Union army. At such a
young age, they had already born witness to the full horrors of war, their
innocence ripped away from them in an instant. It would damage them, as it had
me, leaving them with mental scars that would never fully heal.

‘Poor bastards,’ I
said to myself sadly.

‘They have fought
well,’ Yulia replied from behind me, hearing my lament.

I realised that I had
forgotten about her for a second, so absorbed had I been in the battlefield.
She must have followed me from the dropship.

‘Perhaps,’ I grunted
in agreement.

To be fair to the
FEA, despite brutal losses the company I was watching withdraw had managed to
repel a frontal assault from Loyalist dropships, one of which still smouldered
in the mud where it had crash-landed.

Dropships were fearsome
machines, each equipped with a devastating arsenal of missiles, a Vulcan cannon,
and - unlike the Union dropship - railguns, but they were vulnerable to
dismounted infantry. A single soldier equipped with a smart missile was capable
of bringing one of these high-tech war machines down on his own, and if he died
then there were still another twenty or more soldiers in his platoon who could
pick the weapon up and do exactly the same.

‘They did well to
stop an attack from Loyalist dropships,’ Yulia added respectfully, flicking her
head toward the stricken aircraft. ‘Now we are ready for when they cross
again.’

I gave a small nod.
‘They did do well, but the Loyalists won’t attempt to cross here again.’

‘Why not?’

‘The Loyalists will
be reluctant to attempt another head-on attack,’ I explained. ‘Dropships are
vulnerable to dismounted infantry, they normally receive fire support for their
attacks. The Loyalists have no fire support from their artillery anymore, and
their visibility is too far reduced by the smoke. They won’t want to risk more
of their prized assets.’

'What do you think
they will do instead?'

I turned to regard
Yulia, who crouched in the mud just behind me. I presumed that she was keeping
as close as possible so that she knew exactly what I was doing. That was fair
enough, since I also needed her close by so that I would know what her company
was doing. I noticed that Makito was knelt right beside her, trying to look
indifferent as he surveyed the battlefield. He was nervous - I could see
through the act.

I jerked a thumb at
the young Guardsman. ‘Does he really have to be right next to you?’

Yulia glanced at
Makito for a second, before ordering him away with a flick of her hand. He shot
me an angry glare before obeying her command. I watched him go, squelching away
from us with his rifle held down at his side with only one hand. It was like
watching a child having a sulk because he had been scolded by his mother. I
pitied the lad, for I had no doubt that he would never live to see adulthood.

Yulia was growing
impatient. ‘Well?’

'We need to push forward.'
I nodded toward the battle. 'I can't get decent eyes-on from here.'

Something exploded in
the marsh a few hundred metres away, hurling great clods of earth into the sky.

Yulia pointed toward
the explosion. 'That is the front line,’ she warned, ‘it will not be safe
there.'

I bristled. What did
she think we were -
CROW
fresh out of Uralis?

'I can see that,' I
replied brusquely, 'but if
I
can't see, then I'm no good. We're fighting
troops first, and recce second. Gone are the days when we just mark drop
zones.'

She seemed to accept
my argument. 'What do you intend to do?'

I swept my arm around
to the right in a wide arc. 'Push around the eastern flank, so we don’t get
caught in the crossfire. We’ll attempt to get eyes-on from there.'

Her eyes followed my
arm. 'I will tell my superiors.'

'You do that.' I
turned to Puppy, who watched me intently from his end of the section line, his
head just visible above the grass. 'Prepare to move,' I announced over the
section net. 'We're going to move out to the right and get eyes-on!'

The section repeated
the message verbally, ensuring that absolutely nobody failed to hear it.
Although our section intercom was almost infallible, we never took chances.

Every trooper
automatically checked his safety catch and his pouches, as was the drill for
preparing to move. It was an instinct, as was everything else, created by
endless practice. If you had to think to do something in battle, you usually
forgot, and if you forgot to secure your magazines before moving, then losing a
magazine might cost you your life.

I took one last look
back at Yulia, who was busy speaking over her own net. 'Follow on.'

I picked myself up
and ran along the section line, this time followed by the section that peeled
off after me, one by one. Boots slapped against the wet mud as the section left
its drop-off point, traversing the battlefield in search of a more suitable
location.

Ignoring the
splashing water that soaked into my combats, and the mud that stuck to the
soles of my boots, I maintained a steady running pace that I knew my section
could sustain. There was no point in thrashing them, since we weren't under
fire, but at the same time I wanted to cover the open ground quickly. The grass
made it difficult for us to be seen, standing over waist height, but if the
veil of smoke lifted then we risked being detected by even the least
sophisticated targeting systems.

'Blackjack-One-Zero,
this is Blackjack-One-One-Charlie, message,' I panted as I cut my path through
the wet grass.

The response from the
platoon commander was almost instant - 'Send!'

'Roger. My call-sign
is now mobile, manoeuvring into over watch. Maintain the smoke screen until I
reach my position.'

'Understood. I am
still located with the battalion headquarters, preparing to move forward with
them. They seem to be moving pretty cautiously at the moment, but I’m trying to
give them a gentle kick up the arse.'

My corner of my mouth
twitched. ‘Good luck with that!’

I looked back at Yulia,
who trotted just behind seemingly unaffected by the pace. 'I presume that none
of your forces are across the river yet?' I asked her.

'No.'

That was all I needed
to hear. I switched back to the platoon net. 'Further to my last message,
request close-air support now in anticipation. Engage targets on the far bank
only.'

'Blackjack-One-Zero,
roger. Good idea. You now have two saucers tasked to you.'

Mr Barkley knew what
I was asking for. There was no point in holding the saucers back until I
managed to see the enemy, especially with the smoke obscuring the far bank.
They were more than capable of engaging targets on their own, so long as they
were on the far side of the river where there were no FEA units to get confused
with. The biggest issue we faced was that the robotic aircraft, intelligent
though they were, would struggle to tell the difference between FEA and
Loyalist forces, especially since one side used Alliance equipment, and the
other used a mixture of Alliance, Russian and our own.

We ran for a good few
hundred metres in the mud before I finally turned toward the main river,
finding one of its tributaries to follow. I ran along the edge of the small,
fast-flowing stream of water, using its steep bank for additional cover, but
avoiding the water itself, since that would only slow me down.

As we ran along the
length of the stream toward the Ghandi, balls of flame broke through the
heavens and streaked toward the earth with a whoosh so loud that my headset had
to cut it out to protect my ear drums. They exploded above the Ghandi in great
clouds of smoke that quickly added to the shroud that concealed us from the far
bank. Designed specifically for planetary bombardment, and tasked directly to
us,
Warrior
was loaded with thousands of bombs, enough to continue its
smoke screen for hours or even days. It would continue to drop them until we
told it to stop.

I listened to the
battle that still raged to my left, wondering if the two sides could even see
each other. Like a thick morning fog, the smoke had reduced all visibility
dramatically, and the hot metallic fragments within it rendered thermal imaging
useless. The advantage was that the relief in place could incur minimum
casualties, and the smoke screen would also keep the enemy guessing. The
Loyalist commander would know that something was happening, of course - smoke
was always used to cover movement - but he wouldn’t know what it was. If I was
the enemy commander, I thought, I would assume that the FEA were either
preparing to withdraw, or to counterattack.