EDEN (The Union Series) (17 page)

As I looked up I
realised that Myers was still crouched in the grass, fiddling with his
launcher.

For a second my jaw hung
open at the spectacle.
Was the kid mad?

‘Get down, you tit!’
I yelled.

A railgun shell
struck the ground a few metres ahead of Myers, miraculously imbedding itself
into the wet soil. Undeterred, he hefted the launcher onto his shoulder just as
the two dropships passed over the river.

‘
Get the fuck
down!
’

He didn’t listen. ‘Firing!’
he yelled.

As soon as the
missile launched Myers threw himself to the ground, just as another two railgun
shells hacked the ground either side of him, splattering him with mud.

I watched through the
grass as the missile sped toward the approaching dropships. Already slowing
down to dismount their troops, and with their Vulcan pre-occupied by the two
saucers, the dropships had no chance to defend themselves. The smart missile struck
the left hand dropship with a thump and a puff of smoke, and it fell powerless
toward the ground in front of us. It just managed to clear the river, striking
the bank in a spray of mud and water.

At the same time the
second dropship, having realised that the main threat was not from the saucers,
but from the section it was trying to attack, turned its Vulcan to face us as
it came in to land alongside its stricken partner.

My eyes widened in
horror as I saw the cannon rotate to find its new target. The railgun shells
the dropships had been firing were designed to destroy vehicles and structures,
but were no good for engaging troops. The Vulcan cannon, however, was an
automatic weapon capable of firing thousands of darts, creating a wall of steel
designed to defend against missiles, aircraft and infantry. A single burst
would churn us into mush.

‘Get down!’ I
screamed, falling into the water in my effort to get out of the cannon’s line
of sight.

Yulia knelt up as
though she was about to fire her rifle, but I instinctively gripped the fabric
of her armour, yanking her down with me.

‘Get down, you
idiot!’ I yelled as she landed in the water with a splash.

Ignoring the curses
of the Guard captain, I snatched up my rifle, aiming it at an angle and letting
loose a volley of grenades.

My rifle jolted
against my shoulder as I pumped grenades over the bank, each one suddenly
darting toward its identified target. Ammunition conservation was no longer a
high priority; it would hardly matter how much we had left after the dropship’s
Vulcan cut us to ribbons.

‘Use your grenades!’
I hollered, but it was too late. The Vulcan opened fire.

A Vulcan cannon fires
so fast that it becomes impossible to hear the individual rounds. Instead the
sound becomes more like the roar of some unearthly beast as the sky fills with its
steel darts. I had been on the wrong end of many weapons, but the Vulcan cannon
was something else. I clutched at the wet earth as the hail of darts cracked
and hissed through the air above my head and hacked at the muddy bank. They
punched through the earth with ease, striking the water behind us.

I heard a series of
explosions, and the burst of Vulcan stopped. I lifted my head to see that our
grenades had found their target, detonating around the dropship in clouds of
hot smoke and burning phosphor.

I didn’t know if the
cannon was destroyed, or simply blinded, but I wasn’t taking the chance.

‘Puppy! Fire a
missile! Finish it off!’

‘Roger!’ he replied.

Thank God, I thought,
at least my 2ic was alive.

Thapa too sprang from
the stream to my left, his launcher already over his shoulder. ‘Firing!’ he
yelled.

The missile exploded
out of the launcher, and was in the air for no more than a few seconds before
it struck the nose of the hovering dropship, detonating as it did so in a puff
of smoke.

Such a small amount
of smoke belied the full extent of the damage that the smart missile would have
done when it detonated inside the dropships armoured hull. It fell the last
metre to the ground with a crash.

I lifted my head over
the bank. Both dropships were down, but there were no dismounts to be seen.

‘Watch and shoot!’ I
ordered, and the section emerged back from the water.

Yulia managed to
stand up in the river once more, brushing mud away from her armour. She glared
at me angrily. ‘Don’t touch me again, Andy!’

‘I won’t,’ I growled.
‘Next time I’ll let you get yourself killed! Where’s your
bodyguard
?’

Yulia glanced around
her quickly, spotting Makito curled up into a ball beside Puppy’s fire team.
Her jaw clenched. The boy might have been good at terrorising the villages
along the Paraiso border during the guerrilla campaign, but he had no
experience of front line combat.

‘Are you
sure
you still want him here?’ I asked her, my lips curling into a malicious grin.

‘Yes, he must remain
here with me.’

I held up my hands.
‘Fine. It’s his funeral.’

We watched the two
smoking craft for several seconds, whilst railgun shells continued to detonate
across the river, bathing us in an orange glow.

We couldn’t wait any
longer, I decided. We had to take advantage of the situation and ensure that
the dropship dismounts were dead.

‘Puppy, give cover!’
I shouted. ‘I’m pushing forward!’

‘Roger!’

‘Follow me!’ I
ordered to Myers and Skelton, then pointed at Yulia. ‘You stay here!’

My fire team bounded
forward toward the dropships with our weapons held up into the aim. I moved
around the right side of the stricken craft, ensuring that Puppy’s fire team
could fire to the left side if needed. My finger hovered over the trigger.

A noise came from the
left hand dropship, and suddenly Puppy’s fire team opened fire.

‘Two enemy down!’ Puppy
warned me quietly over the net. ‘They’re dismounting to the left!’

‘Roger,’ I whispered
as I crept around the side of the right hand dropship.

Strange whining
noises came from its hull, presumably the last dying sounds of its engines. I
ignored them as I approached its rear end, beckoning for Myers to draw up
beside me.

I squeezed his
shoulder with a gloved hand, letting him know that I was ready to move with him,
and as one we rounded the corner.

Three Loyalists were
crouched behind the left hand dropship, looking as though they were discussing
some kind of plan. They jumped into action as soon as they saw us, but we were
two quick for them, the two of us firing several times into the pack of bodies,
our darts snatching them to the ground like dolls.

I pointed toward
their dropship. ‘Skelton, cover them!’

‘Yep!’ Skelton took a
knee in the grass, watching for any more soldiers to emerge from the lowered
ramp. If they did then his mammoth would make short work of them.

Knowing that the left
hand dropship was covered, I turned to the ramp of the dropship closest to us.
It was still closed.

‘Think anyone’s alive
in there?’ Myers asked, peering at the ramp as though trying to see through it.

I shook my head. ‘I
doubt it. The missile detonated inside it.’

I studied the rear
ramp, finding an emergency handle hidden beneath a metal panel. As soon as I
touched it, though, my hand darted away. I swore.

Myers looked alarmed.
‘What?’

‘It’s hot …’ I
replied.

‘So they’re dead,
then?’

‘Either that or they’ve
lost a few kilos,’ Skelton joked.

There was nothing
more to do, I decided. Normally I might have attempted to search the bodies for
equipment, rations or useful intelligence, but under the circumstances I didn’t
want to wait around. The Loyalists wouldn’t just send four dropships, more
would be coming.

I turned to look at
where the railgun shells continued to scorch the far bank, much of which was
now ablaze. There were no more red crosshairs there, the small pocket of
Loyalists had either retreated, or most likely died a horrible death. I quickly
used my wizard kit to cancel the fire mission.

‘Let’s get back,’ I
said, and we sprinted back toward the stream.

We slid down the bank,
our boots splashing in the muddy water. Yulia and I exchanged a knowing glance
for a second, my eyes telling her all that she needed to know. The Loyalists
within the dropships were dead.

I turned to Myers and
Skelton and beckoned for them to follow after me.  I then ran back along the
stream, away from the Ghandi.

‘Follow on!’ I told
Puppy as I passed him. 

I was anxious to
extract, having given our position away. Our only defence from further attack
was the overwhelming firepower we had demonstrated, suggesting that we were a
much larger force and deterring any further attack. If the Loyalists believed
that we were that large a target, though, then they would almost certainly task
any remaining artillery they had onto us.

'Where are you
going?' Yulia demanded, but I ignored her as I charged along the stream,
careful not to make myself visible to anybody across the river. 

'Stay low!' I ordered
the section.

'You are cowards,' Yulia
sneered from behind me. I wasn't interested, though. I had just saved her life,
and she should damned well be grateful.

The soft mud and silt
of the stream bed rapidly sapped the strength from my legs, but I resisted the
urge to get out of the water, knowing that an artillery barrage could be
imminent.

We were no more than
a few hundred metres away when the enemy shells detonated behind us, with a
blast that nearly knocked me over into the mud. There was a splash, and
somebody swore behind me.

I turned around.
Silhouetted against a great wall of flame that engulfed the downed dropships,
the section were all dotted along the stream, crouched against the banks with
their bodies half-submerged.

Myers had fallen
over, thrown off balance by the blast. He lifted his respirator away from his
face to allow the brown water to pour out of it.

‘Brilliant,’ he said
sarcastically.

Everyone was alright,
even Makito, who looked like a drunk as he staggered through the muddy water,
overwhelmed by the battle around him.

‘Come on, let’s go!’
I urged, turning to run again. As I did so I caught Yulia’s eye, but she
quickly looked away. If I had listened to her then we would have all died
needlessly, and she knew it.

As we splashed and
fought our way along the stream the bombardment continued, rocking the earth
beneath our boots. I spoke to the platoon commander over the net, informing him
of our compromise and forced withdrawal.

‘Roger,’ Mr Barkley
replied. ‘Any idea of their intent?’

Naturally he would be
trying to piece together the information he was receiving from both my section
and the FEA, in an attempt to make an educated guess as to what the enemy were
doing and why.

‘I think it’s a
feint,’ I replied, trying to avoid panting over the net as I ran. ‘I think the
Loyalists want to try to turn the FEA’s attention.’

Seeing that we were a
good few hundred metres from the railgun bombardment, I held up a hand to stop
the section, and we all turned to observe the marsh.

The ground we had
used to engage the dropships had become a smoking inferno, and as we watched
more railgun shells burst over the marshland, scattering flaming liquid over
the area.

‘Jesus …’ Skelton
exclaimed at the spectacle. It was like a vision of hell. Red glowing ashes
drifted across the stream, carried away by the wind.

‘I thought you were
destroying the enemy artillery,’ Yulia asked, her stern expression exaggerated
by the orange glow from the incendiaries.

I shook my head. ‘We
can’t destroy all of it.’

‘Why not?’

‘They’re dug in close
to Dakar.’

‘What difference does
that make?’

I jerked a thumb
upwards. ‘Your best mates are somewhere up there watching, and if they see
Union artillery or saucers hitting an old Alliance town, it could start a war
across the entire planet.’

‘Is that the reason
why?’ Yulia’s eyes narrowed accusingly. ‘Or is it because you want the
Loyalists to keep their artillery? Maybe this is just a trick - maybe you don’t
want us to win at all!’

‘Oh yeah, that’s
right,’ my voice dripped with sarcasm, ‘because I’m more than happy to be on
the receiving end of that!’

Yulia didn’t reply,
instead she suddenly turned her head, spotting something in the distance. 

‘Look!’ she pointed,
just as a cluster of red crosshairs appeared on my target display, another five
hundred metres beyond the flames.

More dropships had
crossed the river, at least another ten of them that I could see, disgorging
their cargoes into the grass. Undeterred by the addition of Union saucers and
artillery, it looked as though an entire company of Loyalists had made the
crossing, quickly spreading out in anticipation of another railgun barrage. At
least a platoon of them were running toward the relative safety of the forest,
while another appeared to spread out into the marsh, presumably to protect
their comrades from the force that had already destroyed four of their
dropships. I spotted several powered suits amongst their number.