RECCE II (The Union Series Book 5)
Read RECCE II (The Union Series Book 5) Online
Authors: Phillip Richards
RECCE II
PHILLIP RICHARDS
Book Five of The Union Series
The Electronic Book Company
A New
York Times Best-seller
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please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this
author. This ebook contains detailed research material, combined with the
author's own subjective opinions, which are open to debate. Any offence caused
to persons either living or dead is purely unintentional. Factual references
may include or present the author's own interpretation, based on research and
study.
Copyright
© 2016 by Phillip Richards
All
Rights Reserved
CONTENTS:
Chapter 1
– Return to the Warren
Chapter 2
– The Guard
Headquarters
Chapter 3
– Explosive Entry
Chapter 4
– Tactical Questioning
Chapter 5
– The Sewers
Chapter 6
– Advance to Contact
Chapter 7
– Collateral Damage
Chapter 8
– New Mission
Chapter 9
– Europa
Chapter 10
– Copehill
Chapter 11
– Agent Handling
Chapter 12
– Enforced Rest
Chapter 13
– Camp Assault
Chapter 14
– Compound Defence
Chapter 15
– The Barracks
Chapter 16
– The Shuttle Port
Chapter 17
– Strike Op
Author Bio
Phillip Richards was born and raised in Chichester,
south England. He joined the Infantry at the age of seventeen, and he still
serves today. During his service he has taken part in two operational tours in
Kosovo, four in Iraq and a further two in Afghanistan. He is now a Platoon
Sergeant, and he uses what little spare time he has to pursue his hobby,
writing science fiction. This is the fifth science fiction novel that he has
written, which has been influenced by his service within the British Army. The
story and all of the characters within it are entirely fictional, however, so
if you know him and think that you recognise yourself for good or bad reasons,
you are mistaken!
Link to my blog site:
http://militarysciencefictionblog.blogspot.co.uk
Facebook:
Acknowledgements
To start off, no doubt you will have noticed that
Steven has once again produced a fantastic book cover for my latest novel.
Thanks, mate! To see more of Stevo's work, visit him on the following link:
http://steve-o-o-c.deviantart.com
.
Thank you, of course, to my wife and son, for
providing me with the motivation I needed to keep going. Though you might not
know it, I would never have finished this book without you.
Thank you, readers, for waiting as long as you have
without complaint. I’m afraid my job won’t always allow me to produce my books
on time, but I hope they’re still worth it!
Thank you to the instructors of my training team,
for your friendship, constant enthusiasm and inspirational leadership over the
past year. I never thought I could take so much enjoyment from training young
recruits, but it turned out to be one of the most rewarding and satisfying
things I have done in my career. I hope we have all learned something from one
another, and that the wider army will be a better place as a result of our labour.
Of course promoting beyond Sergeant has been an honour, but I am genuinely sad
to leave my days of managing platoons behind. I now realise that it was far
from a stepping stone to better things- it was the pinnacle of my service. I
will miss you all.
To those I have trained, I wish you all the very
best of luck wherever you might go. Stay low, move fast, and remember
everything I taught you!
Finally, as ever, thank you to all the men and women
who serve their nation’s armed forces across the world. I wish you all a safe
return to your loved ones, and I hope that one day you may all find peace.
Introduction
Morale is low in Recce Platoon, lower than it's ever
been.
The Platoon Commander and his men are missing in
action, Yulia is a prisoner of the Presidential Guard, and a bloodthirsty horde
of Militia threatens to overwhelm the scattered remnants of the FEA at any
moment. Andy Moralee and his men have failed their mission- spectacularly- but
just when it seems that nothing could get any worse, the conflict in the Bosque
reaches a new low. As Union and Alliance warships threaten to unleash their
bombs at any moment, and unseen enemies lurk within the shadows, a new weapon
is brought to bear- the civilian population itself.
Taunted by the faintest glimmer of hope and
tormented by the nightmares that plague his sleep, Andy Moralee must do what he
can to hold his battered section together, and have his revenge. War is
looming...
Note from the author:
Recce
II
was written, produced and edited in the UK where spellings and word
usage can vary from U.S. English. The use of quotes in dialogue and other
punctuation can also differ.
1
Return to the Warren
I was sure there were Militiamen somewhere within
the warren. The dark, narrow tunnels still echoed with shouts and sporadic
gunfire. Perhaps there were only a couple of them, trapped underground with
nothing left to do but stand and fight. It was possible that there were hardly
any of them at all, and that the gunfire was actually the result of nervous FEA
conscripts with shaky trigger fingers. Warrens were frightening, even for
trained troopers like ourselves, so the effect on our untrained allies must
have been even more profound.
Using my datapad map to navigate through the network
of tunnels and chambers, I led the platoon back into the bowels of Hill Kilo,
toward the Guard headquarters where our platoon commander had been located
before he went silent. We didn’t know what had happened to him, or his command
group of three troopers, but we were fairly certain that he was being held
hostage by a rogue group of Guardsmen who had sealed their underground
headquarters from the outside world.
The intention of those rogue Guardsmen was vague. All
we knew was that they were to be loyal to their president’s “inner circle”, a
shady group of military leaders who planned to scupper our joint mission to
hold Cellini village. Cutting off the Guard headquarters and capturing our
platoon commander had certainly done that: the remaining Guard and FEA units
were now in total disarray. Even our own platoon would have perished on the
hill had a company of Union dropship infantry not come to our rescue.
A dark cloud now hung over my mind, dark as the narrow,
winding labyrinth we stalked through. There was a terrible sense of futility
that taunted me, threatening to consume what remained of my shattered morale.
All of our efforts to hold onto Cellini village had been in vain. We had taken
heavy casualties, seen one of our comrades brutally murdered by Helstrom, the
Militia’s leader, and now we had lost our own platoon commander. I hoped that
he and his men were OK, that we could find them somewhere within the warren,
but I knew in my heart that the odds were against us.
Our return to the tunnels under Hill Kilo wasn’t
simply a rescue mission. There was still the hope that we might find the
anti-orbital missiles that were stockpiled underground, missiles that the inner
circle perversely wanted the Militia to capture. They were the reason why so
many people wanted our mission to fail – even people within our own government
– and if we found those missiles, then we might at least be able to console
ourselves with a small piece of success.
Then there was Yulia; I couldn’t help wondering if
she was OK, and if she too was being held hostage in the Guard headquarters.
Our sergeant major – arrogant as he was – had handed her over to the Guard,
despite my protest, because he saw her as a political prisoner who we couldn’t
afford to keep. In my opinion, she was the opposite. As our only friend with
connections within the Guard, I was certain that she was our best hope of
finding the missiles, as well as our comrades.
Myers stopped at a junction a few hundred metres away
from the headquarters, his sudden halt snapping me back from my darkened
thoughts.
I moved up to him and glanced down at my datapad,
tapping the screen to check my three-dimensional map of the warren. We were close
to the Guard headquarters – barely a few hundred metres away – and now was a
good time to go firm in order to make sure everyone was together, as well as allow
the sergeant major to give any final orders before we met the rogue Guardsmen.
Sergeant Major Davies was effectively the platoon
commander now, having stepped up to take command in Mr Barkley’s absence. In
his place, Corporal Abdi – or Abs as he was known – had assumed the role of
Recce 2ic, and his section had been cannibalised to replace the casualties we
had taken in our recent battle. The term “Recce 2ic” was hardly even relevant
anymore as our high casualty rate had transformed us from a recce platoon
formed of six independent groups into a much smaller regular rifle platoon,
with only three sections and a small command group that depended on us for
protection. Only once had I seen a worse attrition rate, when my old platoon
had been nearly wiped out on the frontlines during our invasion of New Earth.
Mr Barkley had been my platoon commander back then, and had somehow survived
the campaign as I had. Unfortunately, this time he might not have been so
lucky.
I gripped Myers by the shoulder to prevent him from
stepping off again, before waving my hand downward in front of his visor. Understanding
the gesture, the young trooper dropped to one knee, leaning slightly around the
bend in the tunnel so that he could see any approaching threats. I took a knee
next to him and signalled for the remainder of my section to close up.
Without a word, my men closed right in so that we
were shoulder to shoulder, packing tightly together so that messages could be
passed without the need for net transmissions.
We all waited in woeful silence whilst the platoon
closed up behind us, listening to the distant echoes of gunfire. Although I
couldn’t see my comrades’ expressions in the dark, I knew that the despairing pessimism
I felt was mutual. They were all exhausted, confused and afraid. Confused at
the apparent inability to stop the advancing Militia, and afraid for their
missing comrades as much as for themselves. None of them would have refused to
return into the hellish tunnels, of course, even if the sergeant major had
presented them with the option. They were troopers. Not just troopers, but
recce
troopers, often seen as the special forces of the dropship battalions, and
their friends needed them; but that didn’t mean their minds weren’t in a bad
place.
I felt as if all of my demons had been awoken, free
once again to torment my mind. The thought of losing yet more of my comrades
was unbearable. So many had gone, but I had somehow managed to put them to the
back of my mind over the past few days, as if I had reinvented myself and
started anew. Now the shield I had built around me had collapsed like a stack
of cards, as people I cared for were placed in terrible danger against a
backdrop of utter chaos and human desperation.
I cared for Mr Barkley. He was one of the few surviving
members of my old platoon - and one of the few of them who could still bear to
talk to me. He might not have liked the way I did things, and he might even have
been rude to me on occasion, but we still shared a bond that couldn’t be
broken, a bond formed on the cold forge of war.
Did I care for Yulia? Yes, I guess I did. I didn’t
know what it was that made her matter to me. If it was because I felt we were
kindred spirits, or if it was simply the misplaced lust of a trooper who had
denied himself the company of a woman for too long. Either way, I found myself
fearing for her safety as much as for my comrades.
The tunnel was barely wide enough to allow the sergeant
major to squeeze past my section, trying not to scrape his equipment against
walls of bare rock. He quietly crouched beside me as he studied the junction
and the gloom beyond it.
Distant screaming broke the silence, echoing from
somewhere behind us. There was no telling who it was that screamed, or where
they were. The warren communication network was controlled from the Guard
headquarters and had gone dead at the same time as the boss having disappeared.
Without it chaos reigned, as scattered FEA units lost their ability to
communicate.
‘Do you think the Militia have found another way
into the warren?’ Myers whispered nervously.
The sergeant major considered the possibility.
‘Maybe.’
Nothing seemed to be beyond the Militia’s
capability. What they couldn’t achieve by wit and cunning, they still managed
through dogged determination and seemingly inexhaustible manpower. The FEA had
blown all of the access tunnels that allowed the wave of Militiamen to enter
the warren from the village itself, but there might have been other tunnels
that we weren’t aware of. We had caught Yulia using a tunnel that wasn’t on the
maps our allies had provided us with, and the warren had exchanged hands so
many times during its existence that nobody could be certain of its layout.
Myers fidgeted, glancing around as if he expected
Militiamen to jump out from the walls of the tunnel. ‘What the hell do we do if
they overrun this place?’ he asked me under his breath.
‘Run for our lives,’ I answered grimly.
We all knew that our grip on the warren was fragile
and time was against us. Above us, B Company of the 1
st
Battalion
English Dropship Infantry held a hasty defensive position on Hill Bravo’s
windswept plateau, holding back the horde of Militia that had flooded into Cellini
village. The company of Union troopers were far better trained and equipped
than the Guard battalion that had abandoned us, but they were still horrendously
outnumbered by Helstrom’s bloodthirsty Militia. If the two remaining FEA
battalions didn’t pull themselves together and retake the village, then B
Company would have no choice but to withdraw and leave them to their fate. There
was no way that we could stay if B Company pulled out. This wasn’t our war – half
of the Union army didn’t even know we were operating in the Edo province at all
– so our options were rather limited. Our return to the warren was a risky
gambit, but one we had no choice to take.
The sergeant major looked over his shoulder. ‘Rusakov,
do you know any of the people in the Guard headquarters?’
Rusakov, a Guard NCO who had refused to leave his
countrymen behind, was close behind the sergeant major, sandwiched between him
and his signaller. We had managed to persuade him to come along with us to
advise how to deal with the rogue Guardsmen who held control of their
headquarters. He knew the importance of restoring the warren communication
network as we did, and how crucial it was to the FEA defenders.
‘I know some of the prisoners,’ Rusakov replied with
his thick Edo accent, ‘but not those who captured them. They are zombies. I
have never seen them before.’
‘What are zombies?’ I asked with a raised eyebrow.
I’d heard the expression before, but never asked the
real meaning of the word. It would have been far easier for us to communicate
if he simply spoke his own language and allowed our headsets to translate, but
I decided against making such a suggestion; now wasn’t a time to risk insulting
such a useful ally.
‘They are not from my battalion,’ the burley NCO
explained. ‘They joined us just before we came to capture Cellini. They are
orphans from the war, from when the Union took our lands from the Alliance.
Their brains are made empty. They are alive, but their souls are dead . . .’
I nodded slowly, vaguely interpreting his meaning.
The zombies,
rather than monsters from a hologram,
were young
orphans who had been brainwashed and then indoctrinated to the president’s
cause. I had heard that both Edo and Europa did similar things to their young,
creating soldiers who knew nothing other than combat and utter obedience. I
imagined that they were fiercely loyal to their commanders, carrying out
whatever orders they were given no matter what the cost.
‘The president’s inner circle,’ I concluded. ‘Or at
least, soldiers controlled by his inner circle.’
‘Sounds like it,’ the sergeant major agreed.
The Guard were formed of the remnants of the
Alliance military, those who hadn’t managed to escape when the colonial power
withdrew from planet Eden. Their goal was to resist all attempts to bring their
province into line with their new colonial masters in the hope that one day the
Alliance would return. The inner circle was different. Their goal was to
protect their own interests, and that of the president himself. In order to do
so they had spawned their own private army within the Guard, loyal only to
them.
‘The same fucking bastards that killed all those
people at Dakar,’ Myers realised aloud.