EDEN (The Union Series) (24 page)

Killing a man
silently is nothing like the holograms, it’s an awful act, and horrific to
watch. The soldier’s eyes bulged as he squirmed, pinned between my bayonet and
Myers’s body. The trooper sawed with his blade, blood pouring over his glove as
he cut through the man’s windpipe, not stopping until there was no chance of
him making a noise. Finally I withdrew my rifle with a squelch of released air,
and the soldier fell to the ground in a crumpled heap. Myers stared down at the
body as though he was horrified by what he had done.

I slapped at his arm.
‘Well done. Let’s go!’

A bolt of lightning
arced across the sky, illuminating the village with blinding white light, and
threatening to reveal us to the Guard.

We sprinted across
the open, zigzagging in case the Guard patrol spotted us and opened fire. I
expected to be cut down by darts at any second, and the anticipation spurred me
on ever faster. We had obtained important information, and we needed to get it
back to brigade.

Puppy and his men
were already on their feet when we arrived.

‘We need to go now!’
I panted, checking to see that the other two had made it safely across the open
ground.

‘Yeah, I saw,’ Puppy
replied, glancing nervously over my shoulder. ‘Wildgoose was about to put him
down before you got him! How many more are in there?’

I looked back at the
village. ‘God knows, but it won’t take them long to notice their mate missing.
Where the hell did that bloke come from? What was he doing out there?’

Puppy’s teeth gleamed
wickedly through his visor. ‘He cut his own hole through the dome. I think he
was taking a shit!’

I shook the thought
from my head. ‘We need to move,’ I repeated.

Puppy turned to his
men. ‘Prepare to move!’

We quickly slipped
back into the forest, hurrying to get a good distance between us and the
village before somebody found their butchered comrade. I didn’t run, conscious
of the noise we would make crashing through the undergrowth; instead I strode
right out, setting a fast marching pace that quickly caused our shins to burn.
I avoided our original route – that would have made us vulnerable to an ambush
- and headed directly north in an attempt to throw any pursuers off our trail.

I knew from my time
in the OP that there was a shallow river running along the valley, slowly
making its way out of the highlands before joining onto the Ghandi. I wondered
if I could use it to move rapidly without leaving any ground sign, depending on
the composition of the banks and the river bed. We could follow it, just as we
had done with the maglev line, before selecting somewhere to carefully break
off into the forest again. Any Presidential Guard trackers would then hopefully
be thrown off our scent. Even if they weren’t, it would buy us a bit of time.

I slowed as I neared
the river, noticing something lining its banks. It looked as though somebody
had thrown out the village garbage along its length, piling it up in untidy
heaps. Deciding to exercise caution, I zoomed in with my visor display into the
piles, and my mouth hung open as I realised what I was looking at - they were
bodies.

Stripped to their
underwear, and tossed into piles like animals out of a slaughterhouse, their bodies
were pale and soaked in the rain. They had been shot, every one of them, clean
through the chest, the blood washed away to expose the gruesome wound. Men,
women, children - even the old had been killed - and their corpses thrown
together to slowly decompose in the elements.

‘Looks like we found
the villagers,’ Myers said grimly as we all approached the terrible scene and looked
down at the stacked bodies in disgust. ‘I guess the Loyalists didn’t keep them
after all.’

‘No,’ I corrected
after a pause. ‘The Loyalists kept them. It was the Guard that killed these
people.’

Puppy shook his head.
‘They wouldn’t kill their own people. That’s ridiculous.’

I looked at one of
the bodies - a young boy barely in his teens. His eyes were still open wide,
and his mouth gaped as though in surprise. He wasn’t like Yulia or her friends
in the Guard, I thought, whose faces were hard and cruel; he was innocent.

‘It’s a message to
their own people,’ I said sadly, brushing the boy’s eyes shut with my fingers.
‘Don’t co-operate with the Loyalists.’

‘They were hardly
co-operating,’ Myers argued. ‘They didn’t have a choice!’ 

I shook my head. ‘It
doesn’t matter. Not to the Guard.’

His face screwed up
in revulsion. ‘Those sick bastards.’

‘Yeah.’

Skelton frowned. ‘So
who are the good guys here again?’

I smiled darkly,
remembering being asked a similar question on New Earth, and knowing that the
answer was the same. ‘Nobody,’ I said simply.

‘The people of this
planet are totally messed up, aren’t they?’

I fixed the section
with a hard stare. ‘Not all of them. These poor people weren’t. They let the
Loyalists set up a base right under their village. They didn’t fight them, even
though they were using their village against their own people, and do you know
why?’

The section stared back
at me blankly.

‘
They just wanted
to live
.’

The river was fast-flowing
and swollen by the rain collecting on the highlands, but its banks were shallow
and rocky, allowing us to move along it with relative ease without leaving a
trail behind. I pressed on, eager to make best use of the ground to increase
our pace - and the distance between us and the Guard patrol.

I could swear I could
hear shouting far behind us, though it was hard for my headset to identify such
a distant sound in the pouring rain. It didn’t matter either way; I knew that
as soon as the patrol found the body, then they would search the edge of the
forest, finding the location where Puppy and his fire team had waited. It
didn’t matter how good we were, the weight of our boots and our bodies would
have crushed the undergrowth and the soil beneath it. All they then needed to
do was pick up our trail and follow it. They might make the error of following
the wrong trail, moving back the way we had originally taken, but that was
unlikely. They managed to find us, even though we had thrown them off our trail
once already, so they were unlikely to make such a foolish mistake. They would
identify both trails, and then their commander would ask himself
which way
would I go?
It didn’t take a genius to work out that I wouldn’t simply walk
back the way I came, making a beeline straight back toward my platoon.

I increased my
stride, taking care to keep my boots on the rocks and not leave a print in the
mud. My shins began to burn again, but I ignored the pain, continuing to scan
through the trees as I led my section away from the village.

Eventually I found a
suitable location to break away from the river, and we carefully crept back
into the forest, taking the time to ensure that we left no trail behind. I
hoped that my route had worked, but only time would tell, in the meantime all
we could do was march as fast as we could back toward the platoon, putting as
great a distance as possible between us and our potential pursuers. I
considered using the net, maybe even calling for a dropship to pick us up, but
I decided against it. If it all went wrong then help wasn’t far away; I still
had saucers and artillery if I needed them.

There was no time to
rest, even though my men had been severely deprived of sleep, and our legs
ached from the endless march that had taken us halfway across the Bosque. Not
only were we pressured by the Guard patrol that might be hunting us, but we had
the added pressure of the imminent attack on Dakar. If we didn’t get back on
time, then the platoon commander would be forced to attack without us.

I chewed thoughtfully
on my drinking straw as I marched. What were the Guard up to? If there was an
entire army of Presidential Guard somewhere in the highlands, then it appeared
to be acting separately from the ad-hoc army in the east, sweeping through the
valleys with virtually no opposition. They were well-equipped, having no need
to ransack supplies left in the village, and they had the free time to march
tens of innocent civilians to the river before executing them as traitors.

It just didn’t make
sense. The two armies should have been the other way around, with the Guard
taking the brunt of the fighting. Arguably there was no point in having an army
to the west at all, since the Loyalists would withdraw as ground was lost to
the east anyway.

I cast a glance into
the darkened forest. Was there really an army of Guardsmen out there? And what
were they doing so far from the battlefield?

The rain finally
began to subside, allowing our soaked combats the opportunity to dry. I thanked
the heavens for giving us a break, but my relief was short-lived, as Skelton
hissed at me from behind.

Our friends were
back.

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Ambush

Without breaking my
pace I turned around to face the section, slinging my rifle to my side, and
placing both fists together as though I was holding a stick in my hands. I
snapped the imaginary stick, exaggerating the action so that it could clearly
be seen. S
nap ambush.

I then outstretched
my arm, pointing with a closed palm toward the crag.
Up there.

Skelton nodded,
continuing to follow behind me. He would repeat the message, whether the man
behind had seen me or not, but he wouldn’t do so until he reached the same spot
as me. Certain messages needed to be passed instantly, but others, like snap
ambushes, needed the trooper behind to pass it from the same location. If this
didn’t happen then the rest of the section wouldn’t fully understand what was
happening - in this case not seeing the crag.

I turned away, happy
that the message would be properly passed, and then I led the section for
another fifty metres, before finally selecting a point from which we would
break from our route to hook back around toward the crag. The idea was to
continue our trail past the crag, so that the Guard patrol would follow it.
Before they reached the point where we had changed direction they would have
already passed through our ambush.

I stopped again,
waiting for Skelton to close up to me before whispering, ‘pincushion.’

I pointed back along
the section, and Skelton nodded in acknowledgement, waiting where he was to
tell the next man as I patrolled off again.

One of the most
devastating anti-personnel weapons in our arsenal, the APM-18, or ‘pincushion’
as it was known, was a small device that could be operated remotely by optical
cable or by the section net. It was essentially a powerful magnet set behind
thousands of tiny steel darts similar to those fired by our rifles. When
activated, the magnet repelled all of the darts at once, ripping its
unfortunate victims to pieces with a single volley. It was an ideal weapon to
use in an ambush, because it was quick to deploy and simple to operate, whilst
still packing a punch.

The section continued
to follow on behind me as I quickly swung around, climbing up onto the crag.
Keeping back from the rocky edge of the crag, I crept along its length, careful
not to expose myself to the ground below, where I hoped that the patrol would
pass. It was a good ambush location, raised high enough to have a dominating
view into the undergrowth, but not so much that the tree canopy blocked our
view. Once the ambush was sprung, it would be near impossible for any surviving
soldiers to climb up and attack us, but if things went wrong, then we could
easily disappear back into the forest to make our escape long before they
reached us.

At the rear of the
section, Puppy, having received my message to deploy the pincushion, would have
quickly placed it down amongst the foliage, angling it in the direction I had
given before activating it and following us up the crag. The Guard patrol would
never see it, and even if their scanners - if they even had any - picked it up
it would be far too late.  

Once I was happy that
we had reached the ambush location I had selected, I dropped to the ground and
crawled to the edge of the crag. The section followed suit, quickly forming-up
either side of me. They hugged the cover, moving into a position where every
man could quickly spring up and fire, but staying out of view. I lifted my
rifle, holding it up just far enough for my camera to see over the edge of the
crag. There was nothing there - not yet anyway. I guessed that the patrol was
still a hundred metres behind, and wouldn’t come into view for another couple
of minutes.

A hand tapped my
boot. I turned to see that Puppy was lying behind me.

‘Pincushion’s out,’
he whispered. ‘You want cut-offs out?’

I considered his
proposal. Cut offs were ideally composed of two troopers, placed away from the
ambush to catch anybody attempting to make a run for it.

‘No, mate,’ I
replied, ‘we don’t have enough time.’

The section 2ic
nodded.

‘I will initiate the
ambush,’ I continued. ‘Fire the pincushion as soon as it goes noisy. Just make
sure you keep an eye out to the flanks, just in case they suss us out.’

Another nod. ‘OK.’ He
crawled away, taking up his own position in the middle of his fire team.

I thought through my
plan whilst we waited for our victims. Ambushes were about surprising the enemy
with an overwhelming rate of fire, ideally killing as many of them as possible
before they even knew what was happening. The remainder, in total disarray,
could then be picked off as they ran or tried to fight back. I had been caught
out in an ambush before, walking through the streets of a New Earth city, but
it had failed because the enemy hadn’t co-ordinated their weapons to achieve
that sudden, brutal strike. Unlike the ambush laid out by the New Earth rebels,
ours was simple and well-rehearsed. Our firepower was massive, multiplied by
the devastating wall of darts fired by the pincushion. I would spring the
ambush with my own rifle, and as one the section would open fire with all of
its weapons, just as the pincushion was activated. Few soldiers would survive such
a terrible onslaught, if any at all.

Myers hissed at me.
‘Another reading,’ he pointed off to our right. ‘Twenty metres.’

The Guard patrol had
almost all of their electronic equipment switched off, otherwise we would have
found it much easier to track them, but one of them was using something
occasionally, perhaps communicating on their net. A regular scanner might not
pick it up, but to our advanced equipment it was the equivalent of shouting out
– ‘
Here I am! Come and get me!’

Sure enough, the
first soldier came into view. I held my rifle steady above my head, zooming in
to take a better look at him. Sure enough, he wore a black eagle badge on his
shoulder; the insignia of the Presidential Guard.

Why hadn’t the Guard
simply cut us off, I wondered, didn’t they have the man power? They could have
called in soldiers from the FEA to catch us, but so far nothing had happened.
It seemed to be just us and them.

The soldier was walking
at a high pace with his head lowered, turning left and right as he scanned the
forest floor. He was their tracker - the man who had so far managed to follow
us every step of the way using the clues that we inadvertently left behind.

Behind the tracker
more Guardsmen emerged from amongst the trees, wading through the undergrowth
with their weapons raised ready to fire. They were well-armed, with an
assortment of rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers that matched our own.
They had no smart launcher, though, which was a bonus. I noted that their
patrol discipline was good, with wide spaces between each soldier so that they
couldn’t be killed by a single burst of darts from our mammoth. They scanned
their arcs warily, no doubt expecting to catch up with us soon. Little did they
know that we were already waiting for them.

The patrol was headed
so that it would pass directly in front of us, walking straight into the jaws
of our trap.

I looked along the
crag at the section, all of whom lay flat to the ground, watching me intently.
I gave them a thumbs-down, and pointed in the direction of the patrol.
Enemy.
That way.

Sensing that the
ambush was imminent, hands tightened around pistol grips and bodies tensed, but
nobody moved. Like predators waiting to spring on their prey, they waited,
their eyes burning with anticipation. Those bastards were part of an army that
had killed innocent civilians.
Their own people.

When no more soldiers
entered my view, I presumed that we had the entire patrol. I counted seven of
them, which made sense, for one of their number had died horribly outside the
village.

I waited for the
patrol to pass directly in front of us, not wanting to initiate the ambush
until I knew that we could inflict maximum damage.

The second man in the
patrol stopped, turning to look up at the crag.

Shit! Had he seen
us?

He wasn’t looking
directly at me, so he hadn’t managed to spot my rifle sight poking up over the
rocks. He was probably the patrol commander, and he had noticed the crag and
the vantage point it had over his patrol. Like an animal catching the scent of
danger, he scanned the edge of the crag warily.

I could almost read
his mind.
That’s a good place for an ambush,
if I was them, that’s
where I would go.

The commander turned
to face his men, lifting an arm as if he was about to give an instruction.

That was all I needed.
I sprang up from the rocks, my finger tapping the power up button on my rifle,
before pulling back on the trigger in a single blur of movement.

The commander didn’t
have a chance. The magnets in my rifle screamed, propelling the steel dart
toward him. Within a millisecond of me pulling the trigger a wave of electrons
passed through the network of tiny wires woven into my combats, passing
information on the target identified by my visor display to the barrel of my
rifle. Tiny adjustments were made to the dart’s trajectory as it passed through
the series of magnets, correcting human error and eliminating any hope of his
survival. Struck by the dart, he collapsed to the ground, and I fired several
more of them into him for good measure.

The crag erupted with
noise as the section let rip, churning the undergrowth as they spat death into
the patrol. Puppy fired the pincushion simultaneously, unleashing the lethal
wall of steel needles that cut through the forest in a cloud of vegetation,
sawdust and blood.

Somehow one of the
Guardsmen had escaped our initial barrage, bolting through the ferns in his
desperate bid for freedom.

‘Get that bell end!’
I hollered over the noise, and seconds later he was cut down by Myers’s mammoth.

Not a single man was
left standing. The ferns continued to dance under the relentless hail of darts,
but there was no sign of anybody fighting back. How could they? Nobody could
survive such an onslaught.

I lowered my rifle.
‘Stop!’

A few weapons stopped
firing.

‘Stop!’ I yelled. ‘Don’t
waste your ammo! Watch and shoot!’

Silence. We waited
for any sign of life, ready to open fire if the bloodied bodies so much as
stirred.

When nothing happened
I looked around at Puppy. ‘I’m gonna take my boys around and search! You cover
from here!’

‘Roger!’

I picked myself up
and sprinted back along the crag, passing behind Puppy and his fire team. I had
the perfect opportunity to gain some intelligence on our shadowy new foe, but I
needed to be rapid. If any more guardsmen were nearby then they would have heard
the gunfire and be rushing to the aid of their fallen comrades.

I reactivated the net
as I ran. There was no need to run silent now, not until I moved off. Our
location was hardly a secret anymore.

‘Blackjack-One-Zero-Alpha,
this is Blackjack-One-One-Charlie, contact! My call-sign has conducted an
ambush onto a hostile patrol at my present location!’ I looked down at my
datapad to ensure that our grid had been sent. At least now the platoon
commander would know exactly where we were and what was going on.

There was a pause
before the boss finally responded, ‘One-Zero-Alpha, confirm you have conducted
an ambush?’

There was a hint of
frustration in the platoon commander’s voice. I knew what he was thinking -
even though he was tens of kilometres away and speaking to me on the net -
what
the hell is Corporal Moralee doing?

‘That is correct,’ I
panted. ‘We were being followed by the patrol. I have good reason to believe
that they intended to kill or capture us.’

There was another
long pause over the net as I reached the foot of the crag where the patrol had
been. I scanned the shredded ferns for bodies, identifying several of them
nearby. Two were particularly close - the tracker who had been at the front of
the patrol, and the man I had identified to be the commander.