EDEN (The Union Series) (20 page)

As we ran Myers
opened fire, picking off a Loyalist soldier running back through the forest
toward the suits. He had probably been sent to find out what had happened, and
the game was most definitely up. We needed to get away fast.

I ran into the depths
of the forest, crashing through the undergrowth as though the Devil himself was
chasing me. Unlike in my dreams, my legs worked fine, and I set a fierce pace
as I tried to get as much distance as possible between me and the Loyalists.

Finally, after running
for a good few hundred metres, I stopped to listen to the battle, and to wait
for the others to catch up.

Yulia was first to
arrive, panting slightly as she took a knee beside me, and she scanned her arcs
with her rifle. She must have been an Alliance trooper before the war, I figured,
because she took everything happening around her in her stride. ‘
Once a
soldier; always a trooper’,
went the saying. She was too professional to be
home-grown Presidential Guard.

‘I have told Major
Bhasin that three suits are destroyed,’ she said, as the others closed up with
us, breathing heavily.

‘Good. Are they
attacking again?’

‘Yes,’ she replied,
‘the platoon is advancing.’

I frowned. ‘What?’

Yulia glanced at me.
‘The platoon commander is dead. He tried to attack on the right flank when we
did, which is why we heard shooting before we attacked the suits.’

‘So who is leading
them?’

‘Major Bhasin is
leading them. They are advancing.’

I knew by the look on
her face that Yulia wasn’t telling me everything. ‘Is he
with
them?’

Her jaw clenched, but
she said nothing. The blood rushed from my face as I realised what was happening
on the edge of the forest, and Myers blinked when I looked back at him and
Skelton.

‘Come on!’

I looked across the
scene of carnage, my face contorted in disgust. It was butchery. There was no
other way to describe it.

The FEA platoon had
advanced head-on into the remaining Loyalists in the forest, like an army from
centuries ago. Leaderless and armed with nothing other than the rifles and
bayonets they held in their hands, they had charged toward the Loyalists in
their final effort to halt the advance.

They had succeeded.
Shaken by the sudden loss of their suits, then faced by a horde of FEA running
at them through the trees, the Loyalists had withdrawn. But it had been a controlled,
fighting withdrawal, unlike the mindless charge of the child soldiers sent
forward by Bhasin. Their bodies littered the ground, blood spattered across the
undergrowth.

Makito looked at the
scattered corpses indifferently, and the blank expression on his face made me
want to vomit.

‘Poor fucking
bastards,’ Myers whispered.

I didn’t respond,
instead speaking to Puppy over the net I asked, ‘What’s happening out there?’

‘There’s a body of
men withdrawing from the forest, so I’m guessing your attack was successful.’

I glanced at Yulia.
‘You could say that. What about the main body?’

‘They’ve gone firm,
but I think they’re about to withdraw.’

‘Good. Have Wildgoose
harass them all the way out. Go for their commanders.’

‘Will do.’

I looked again at the
gruesome spectacle. ‘Poor bastards,’ I muttered - I couldn’t stop saying it.
What a tragic, total waste of human life. The Loyalists had been forced into
retreat, but at the cost of tens of lives, and all because Bhasin wasn’t
prepared to lead them properly himself. He must have known how to attack the
Loyalists properly - he was Presidential Guard after all – but he didn’t want
to risk leading his men from the front, so instead he sacrificed them like
cattle; meat into the grinder.

‘Poor bastards,’ I
repeated.

There was movement in
amongst the ferns, only a few metres away. I walked over, only to find a young
girl, no older than her mid-teens, lying in a bloody pool on the forest floor.

She was convulsing,
several darts had pierced her stomach and upper legs, and her left calf had
been severed entirely, exposing a section of white bone beneath quivering flaps
of flesh. Blood poured from her wounds, staining the ferns and soaking into the
dirt below.

Her eyes were wild,
darting between us in terror. She knew that she wasn’t far from death.

‘Myers!’ I ordered.
‘Get me a tourniquet!’

I pulled open my
medical pouch, ripping out my quick clot foam. We needed to stop the blood flow
from her calf before she bled out, but meanwhile I could attempt to seal the
other wounds to her abdomen. Her breathing was fast, her chest rising and
falling rapidly, but both sides appeared to be moving equally suggesting that
neither of her lungs had collapsed.

‘Andy,’ Yulia said,
crouching beside me, ‘there is no medical chain.’

‘Well make one,’ I
snapped, stuffing the first piece of foam into one of the holes in her stomach.

‘It cannot be done,’
she said. ‘I am sorry.’

‘There must be
something you can do,’ I argued, continuing my work. Blood dripped from my
gloves.

Myers hadn’t applied
his tourniquet, instead he held it in his hand, blinking as he watched me try
to save the girl’s life.

‘Come on, Myers, get
the damned tourniquet on!’

Yulia’s hand rested
on my shoulder. ‘There is nothing we can do. She will die here.’

I couldn’t draw the next
piece of foam from its packet - my hands were shaking too much, affecting my
dexterity. I grew angry at myself for not being able to complete such a simple
task, and the angrier I became the less control I had over my hands.

Finally I tossed the
packet at the ground. ‘
Fuck it!’

‘Andy …’

‘No!’ I shouted.
‘Jesus! Fuck!’ I pointed down at the dying girl. ‘Look at her! Fucking
look
at her!
She’s a
child!
’

‘We can’t save her,
Andy,’ Yulia repeated. Her dark, cold brown eyes softened for a brief moment,
as though she was about to cry. She was telling the truth.

I pulled out an
auto-injector from my medical pouch and placed it against the girl’s thigh. I
couldn’t leave her like that, lying in the forest waiting to die.

Skelton frowned. ‘What
are you doing?’

‘What does it look
like?’ I activated the injector, pumping painkillers into the girl’s body,
before reaching for another one.

Surprising all of us,
Yulia crouched down beside the girl’s head, cupping it in her hands as I
prepared the second auto-injector. She whispered soothing words into the girl’s
ear. 

‘How many does it
take to kill her?’ Myers asked.

‘Two, in quick
succession,’ I replied knowingly, and he gulped.

I knew what I was
doing, because I had seen it done before when I allowed Westy to kill his best
friend’s wife in an act of mercy. I hadn’t thought about the mental anguish it
would cause when my old section commander found out who the woman he killed
was, but now I knew it had to be me that carried out such an act. I had to
shoulder the burden of guilt on my own.

I injected her once
more, and we watched the girl as the life slowly slipped away from her, each
breath becoming noisier as her lungs filled with fluid. She took one final
breath, and then stopped, her eyes staring through us and into the canopy.

‘She’s gone,’ Yulia
said. She removed the girl’s helmet and pulled back her respirator, closing her
eyes with her fingers. She sniffed. ‘Do you want to go around and finish off
the rest of them? I do not think you have enough injectors, but we can use a
knife.’

I glared at her, but
she simply stared back blankly. She was right, and I knew it. With no medical
evacuation chain to speak of, there was nothing we could do at all for the wretched
soldiers who littered the forest. War was ugly, we all knew it, but that day
had opened my eyes to the full brutality of the Bosque.

‘No,’ I said finally,
shooting a hateful look back at Makito. ‘I’ve seen enough here. Where is your
“Major”?’

‘He has returned to
headquarters to report success,’ Yulia responded.

I nodded slowly. ‘Of
course he has.’

We returned to the
edge of the forest to watch as the remaining force of Loyalists withdrew back
toward their original drop-off. Harried by Wildgoose and his sniper rifle, they
stumbled through the mud in increasing desperation as one by one their leaders
fell.

I found Puppy
crouched in a shallow stream, watching as the sniper went about his work. I
couldn’t see Wildgoose, creeping around somewhere out in the marsh with only
Holland to provide him with protection. Snipers worked best in small groups -
an entire fire team made them easier to spot. 

Puppy saw me amongst
the trees and gave me a wave. ‘There you are. How was that?’

‘Not so good,’ I
replied on the net. ‘They lost an entire platoon.’

Even from a distance,
Puppy looked surprised. ‘All of them?’

‘All of them.’

Further east along
the river, the far bank was being pounded by everything the Union had to offer.
Flames billowed as incendiary shells burst over the marsh, and several saucers
unleashed their payloads into the forest beyond. It was a devastating display
of firepower, intended to soften up the Loyalists on the far bank before the
first FEA dropships made their crossing.

‘The feint failed,’
the platoon commander informed me over the platoon net. ‘The Loyalists never
got close enough to turn the attention of the main FEA force. Now that our new
“friends” are on the offensive, I think it’s unlikely that the Loyalists will
attempt another crossing. I think that they will change their stance and
attempt to block the FEA advance, but their momentum is lost. If the FEA keep
the pressure on, and with our artillery firing them in, I think that the
Loyalists will be in full retreat before the sun sets, possibly moving back
under the anti-aircraft bubble around Dakar.’ 

The first phase of
our mission had been successful. We had managed to stop the FEA line from
crumbling, and given them the firepower they needed to attack back into the
Bosque. I took no pleasure in our success, though. Gazing sadly over the battle
that raged across the river, I realised that the FEA victory had been at a
terrible cost.

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Change in Mission

The fog descended again
as day turned to night, cutting out the starlight and plunging the forest into
darkness. The Loyalist bombardment continued; the noise of each salvo sounding
louder or quieter as they seemingly struck out at random along the Ghandi.

We waited in the
dark, having moved into the forest on the far bank to a grid given to us by the
platoon commander. Rather than getting the entire platoon to congregate
together only to be blown to pieces by a single railgun shell, he had given us
grids that were close enough for him to call in only the commanders, briefing
us up so that we could then return to brief our men. There was always the
danger that the command group could be blown to smithereens instead, but at
least then our sections were left alive to continue the mission under the
control of the 2ics.

Half of the platoon
was still moving in from the north, returning from its recce of Dakar with the
sergeant major. We waited for them amongst the ferns, listening to the distant
shouting of orders, the woeful cries of injured soldiers out in the marsh, and
the never-ending bombardment.

‘Don’t they ever get
bored?’ Myers asked irritably, as another salvo struck nearby, the fog flashing
faintly with each blast. He was inside his thermal bag, his head propped
against a tree. I had ordered my section to rest, with half of them sleeping whilst
the other kept watch for unwelcome visitors.

‘Doesn’t look like
it,’ Skelton said, scanning with his mammoth into the mist. ‘Can’t imagine
they’re hitting much, though.’

‘So what are they
shooting at? Just trying their luck? Or …’

‘Myers, go to sleep,’
I cut in.

‘I can’t sleep,’ he
replied. ‘I think I’ve got too much adrenalin in me, you know?’

‘You still need to
sleep. You don’t know when you’ll next get it.’

‘OK.’

We sat in silence,
scanning out into the darkness. I saw Puppy shaking a man out of the corner of
my eye, telling him to roll over because he was snoring. Sleep wasn’t lazy, it
was good administration, and it was my responsibility as a commander to make
sure that my men were well-rested. Unfortunately, though, if a trooper snored,
then he could expect to be woken up - a lot.

‘Do you believe in
aliens?’ Myers asked me suddenly.

I looked down at the
trooper irritably. He was staring up into the fog swirling above the canopy. ‘What
are you on about aliens for?’

He blinked. ‘I was
just thinking, if they really were out there, on a planet nearby or something,
what they might be thinking - you know - watching us.’

Skelton whispered, ‘They’d
be thinking - “What the fuck are them lot up to?” - that’s what they’d be
thinking, mate.’

He grinned, his teeth
just about visible beneath his visor. ‘We’re a pretty messed up people, aren’t
we?’

‘Myers,’ I said,
sounding like a mother scalding her child, ‘if you don’t go to sleep then I’ll
swap you with Skelton.’

‘I’m cool with that,’
Skelton said, but Myers had already screwed his eyes shut.

‘Aliens …’ I
exclaimed, shaking my head. ‘We’ve got far worse things to worry about here in
the real world than the aliens.’

Skelton nodded
slowly. ‘No shit.’

I heard somebody
brushing through the ferns, and turned to see that Yulia had returned from the
river. ‘How’s it looking over there?’ I asked her.

She crouched beside
me, casting a glance back toward the Ghandi. ‘We are trying to establish a
permanent crossing, but artillery from Dakar is making it difficult. Each time
we attempt to place a bridge, they detect it and destroy it.’

‘How?’

Yulia shrugged. ‘They
have many methods. Reconnaissance patrols like yours, observation posts,
sometimes local civilians …’

I raised an eyebrow.
‘Local civilians?’

She nodded. ‘Sometimes.
The people who live in the forest will often choose the side that is winning.
The Loyalists will order them to tell them what we are doing, and they will
tell them. They just want to survive.’

‘So they spy on you?
What happens if they get caught?’

Yulia’s expression
hardened. ‘They die. They are executed as traitors.’

I shook my head in
disbelief, unable to believe that the people of the forest were so fickle.

The captain looked at
me almost sympathetically. ‘You are from a different world, Andy. It is a
choice that they make, to fight on the side of the Loyalists. It does not
matter why, if we catch them, they are killed anyway.’

We sat in silence for
a few moments, listening to the tortured wails of an abandoned soldier begging
for someone to come and kill him. He was from away from us, his pleading cries
carrying across the still air. There was nothing that we could do for him, or
the tens of others out there, dying in the marsh. God, I thought, what a horrific
world we live in.

‘You have killed many
people, Andy,’ Yulia said, catching my eye, ‘but the suffering of others still
causes you pain.’

‘You don’t know
anything about me,’ I replied gruffly.

‘Perhaps not. What do
you intend to do now? My people are preparing to advance.’

I sighed, relieved to
change the subject. ‘The rest of our platoon has almost returned from Dakar.
Once they arrive, the boss will close in the commanders to deliver his next set
of orders.’

‘They are the ones
who destroyed the artillery batteries dug into the highlands,’ she guessed.

‘That’s right.’

‘You should use the
same abilities against the positions around Dakar. You have the ability to end
this war in minutes, but instead it must take days.’

‘End it?’ I frowned.
‘We’d be firing shells at your own people.’

She shrugged indifferently.
‘They chose to stay there.’

I laughed bitterly.
‘They didn’t chose, Yulia! The Loyalists
made
them stay. Don’t you get
it? The Loyalists want them to stay there, because they know we can’t bomb
Dakar whilst they’re there. It’s better than any armour, any burrow – it’s an
impregnable human shield.’

‘They choose to stay
there,’ she argued. ‘They choose not to fight.’

‘They choose not to
fight, so they deserve to die? Is that how it works on your world? I’m not a
good man, I know I’m not, but even I know there’s something wrong in bombing a
city full of civilians. If we bomb Dakar, there’ll be Alliance bombs pouring
down from the heavens like rain, cities raised to the ground and forests
flattened, across the entire planet. You want that?’

We both seethed with
anger, our eyes burning into one another.

Yulia was first to
lower her gaze. ‘No.’ She stood, turning to walk away. ‘I will need to collect
Makito,’ she said, ‘he has been speaking with one of our commanders, but he
will need to be here for your orders.’

‘OK,’ I said curtly.

I watched the captain
wade back through the undergrowth in search of her comrade, her outline slowly
fading in the fog.

‘Not best of friends,
are you?’ Myers asked quietly.

I glanced down at
him. ‘No.’

There was a piercing
whistle, and then the through the fog light flickered as another barrage
thumped nearby.

Skelton turned his
head upward, as though he could see the shells passing above us. ‘They’re
obsessed with the artillery in Dakar.’

‘They will be,’ I
agreed, ‘a huge amount of Loyalist artillery is around there. Clearly the
Loyalists knew we would get involved eventually, because the FEA clearly don’t
care about bombing civilians. Just as well they don’t have artillery.’

As we spoke, two
troopers emerged out of the undergrowth, our visor displays instantly
recognising him as friendly. I lifted my head and waved them over, just in case
their own visors hadn’t identified us in turn.

The two troopers were
part of the platoon commander’s group; a small fire team that gave him the
protection to move independently. The boss often used them to pass verbal
messages, removing the need for him to use the net unnecessarily. In battle the
Loyalists would struggle to single us out, but out of contact our net chatter
could be triangulated, giving them something to zero their guns into. One of
the two troopers stopped beside me, crouching down to whisper his message. ‘The
other half of the platoon is in. The Boss wants all commanders together for
orders.’

‘No worries.’

The trooper looked around
warily, lowering his voice even further. ‘He asks for our “friends” not to be
present.’

‘Oh?’ I couldn’t hide
my surprise. ‘Any reason for that?’

‘Not sure,’ the
trooper said, ‘he’s not happy with something the Presidential Guard are doing.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘I think Andy and his
girlfriend have fallen out anyway,’ Myers said with a grin.

The trooper laughed
quietly. ‘Is she difficult?’

I held up a hand. ‘Don’t
ask.’

‘The other section’s
been having a hard time with them as well,’ the trooper said. ‘Even the Boss is
snapped.’

‘Who would have
thought the FEA would be a bunch of strokers,’ Myers said sarcastically.

‘Yeah,’ I agreed,
just as Puppy arrived beside me to see what was going on. ‘Alright mate?’ I
asked.

‘Not bad,’ he replied
softly, stooping over us. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I’m going for
orders. If Yulia gets back, keep her here.’

‘Understood.’

I reached over and
gave Myers a shake. ‘Up you get, mate, I need you to come with me.’

Myers groaned. ‘Really?
I was just falling asleep!’

I felt no sympathy.
‘Well you should have gone to sleep earlier, but instead you wanted to talk
shit about aliens. Puppy, if you take Skelton into your fire team while I’m
away, he hasn’t had any rest yet, so give him a chance to get his head down.’

‘No worries.’

Skelton gave Myers a
rough pat on the shoulder, as the young trooper pulled himself out of his bag.
‘Unlucky, mate. Lesson learnt.’

The commanders of the
platoon came together in a small clearing, huddling close together in a circle.
There were six of us in total - the four section commanders, including me, Mr
Barkley, and the sergeant major. Myers and the other escorts all spread out
into the forest, keeping watch in case the vulnerable command group attracted
unwanted attention.

‘I’ll kick this off
with a
well done
,’ Mr Barkley began, regarding each of us in turn. ‘The
first phase of the operation has been a major success - all along the river.
We’ve managed to bring the Loyalist advance to a halt, and they’ve withdrawn
back toward the protective sphere around Dakar to lick their wounds. With their
forward battery destroyed, their ability to strike onto the river has been
significantly reduced, and we have the sergeant major and his merry men to
thank for that. Sergeant Major, care to explain your objective?’

The sergeant major nodded
as all eyes turned to him. ‘As you know, while you were marrying-up with the
FEA the night before, my half of the platoon was moving to the north of the
Ghandi to locate the forward battery. It didn’t take us long to locate them,
thirty kilometres north of the river, since the battery was firing constantly.
The artillery pieces were all in the open, and were being moved from site to
site by wheeled vehicle. No effort was being made to dig in the weapons;
clearly they were intending to move forward with the Loyalist front line. On
H-hour, we used our own railgun artillery to destroy the position, following up
with a brief small arms engagement …’

During the brief
small arms engagement, the two recce sections and small command group that made
up the 2ic’s multiple stormed the Loyalist artillery position. Reeling from the
Union shells, the surviving artillery crews made easy targets, and were quickly
wiped out by the small band of recce troopers that suddenly emerged out of the
forest in a hail of darts, grenades and missiles. Explosives were planted on
the remaining guns, destroying the fragile arrays of magnets along their
barrels and rendering them useless, before the sections melted back into the
forest as suddenly as they had appeared.