EDEN (The Union Series) (34 page)

‘Keep going,’ the
sergeant major urged from behind, crossing the bridge with the final section
behind him.

I made it onto the
far bank and the platoon formed-up into the maglev depot, spreading out amongst
the trains while we waited for the remainder of the platoon to cross.

We were across the
river, and now all we needed to do was move another three kilometres into the
Bosque. Then we would marry-up with our sister platoon, before being extracted
by dropship back to the safety of Paraiso and leaving the people of Dakar to
their fate. It left a bitter taste in the back of my mouth, knowing that we had
left all those people to die at the hands of the Guard.

Corporal Abdi lifted
his head, just as I made to lie back on my stretcher once more, his eyes open
wide with surprise. ‘Someone’s coming from the tunnel!’ he exclaimed.

In a sudden flurry of
activity, the entire platoon whirled around to meet the new threat, just as the
last few troopers hurled themselves away from the bridge.

FEA soldiers burst
from the tunnel entrance, running purposefully along the maglev rails toward
the river.

‘Hold your fire!’ Mr
Barkley ordered, and tens of fingers hovered over their triggers as we watched
the approaching soldiers.

I stepped away from
the stretcher, glancing nervously at the boss. Surely that was it, I thought as
I powered up my rifle, our welcome had expired. Finally showing their true
colours, the FEA had been ordered to chase down and kill the Union troopers
that occupied their lands. All past allegiances had been forgotten, and now it
was kill or be killed.

The charge continued,
headed directly for the bridge. There was an entire platoon of them, all led by
a single Guard officer.

The platoon commander
licked his lips and made as if to speak, and my hands gripped my rifle tight. I
took up aim at the Guardsman, knowing that if he went down then the attack
would probably stall.

I zoomed in to get a
perfect aim onto the target, and my mouth gaped when I recognised the
Guardsman. It was Yulia.

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The Last Stand

‘Do not shoot!’ she
shouted across the river, as she stepped onto the girders. ‘Do not shoot us! We
are not your enemy!’

Our rifles lowered as
we exchanged puzzled glances. What the hell was going on?

Then, just as the
first soldiers reached the edge of the river, another group of people emerged
from the entrance to Dakar. They were civilians.

The boss quickly waved
for us to lower our weapons. ‘Do not engage! Let them cross!’

The FEA platoon
crossed the bridge, carefully negotiating the metal girders. Behind them
several soldiers jabbered instructions at the civilians, slowing them down and
urging for them to be calm. If they tried to run across the bridge in a panic,
then many of them would fall to their deaths.

What was Yulia doing?
She was actually helping the civilians to escape. Surely that went against the
President’s order to punish the city?

I looked to Mr
Barker, and he shrugged.

Yulia pointed at the
rows of carriages to our west, in between us and the other bridges, and the FEA
soldiers flocked across to them, forming some kind of defensive line. Satisfied
that her order was being carried out correctly, she trotted over to the platoon
commander. The two of them shared a respectful nod as she approached, taking a
knee beside him. She caught me staring at her in disbelief, and she smiled.

‘Thank you for
letting us across,’ she said, catching her breath. ‘For a moment, I thought
that you would shoot us.’

And I thought you
would shoot us …
I shook my head in
bewilderment.

Mr Barkley looked at
her. ‘We almost did for a second. May I ask what you’re doing, Captain
Kristov?’

‘My commanders have
sealed off the city,’ she said, flicking her head toward the other bridges. ‘I
have organised a small party to open another escape route, but you have beaten
me to it.’

Civilians continued
to pour out of the tunnel entrance, filing toward the bridge and crossing it
before making their break for freedom, disappearing into the forest. In direct
contrast to the massacre outside the main city entrance, several FEA soldiers
stood either side of the bridge, maintaining order as the people of Dakar fled
for their lives. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Mr Barkley turned to
watch the civilians as they dispersed into the trees. ‘I presume your
commanders won’t be too happy about this?’

Yulia tapped her
headset. ‘No. I can hear them now. They are not happy, and so we must remain
here to defend the bridge.’

The platoon commander
nodded slowly. ‘That’s very admirable, Captain. I assume you know that it’s now
time for us to leave?’

She returned the nod.
‘I understand.’

‘Good luck, Captain
Kristov.’ He slowly extended a hand.

Yulia took it,
shaking it gently. ‘And you.’

She looked to me as
she stood to return to her comrades amongst the carriages. ‘Goodbye, Andy.’

I raised a hand, and
watched as she made her exit, disappearing into the depot.

We sat in silence for
a moment, as though stunned by the sudden change in our perception toward
Yulia, as well as shamed at the thought of abandoning her. She hadn’t sent
Makito at all, I realised, she’d had nothing to do with it. She had been on our
side all along.

Was I wrong to have been
so distrusting, I wondered? No - I had far too many reasons to doubt her. After
all, the Guard had already killed hundreds, if not thousands of innocent people
across the Bosque. But she was one person amongst them who’d had the courage to
stand up and fight for what she believed in, even when everyone around her
soaked themselves in blood. So why did I still feel so terrible?

Suddenly there was a
massive explosion from the far side of the depot, and tens of magnets shrieked
at once from amongst the carriages.

The civilians on the
bridge began to panic, and despite the FEA soldier’s best efforts to calm them
down, several of them fell from the girders, hurtling into the river below. I
watched as they were swept away by the rushing water, their heads appearing and
disappearing as they fought to stay afloat. Most civilian respirators weren’t
meant to be submerged, and I knew that they were almost certainly doomed to die
long before the river threw them onto the bank kilometres downstream. 

‘We need to move now,
Boss,’ the sergeant major shouted, wrenching us all back to the reality of our
own situation with a jolt.

‘Roger! Prepare to
move!’

‘Prepare to move!’ the
platoon chorused in response.

Mr Barkley pointed
southward. ‘Corporal Stanton, head off! Bounding overwatch!’

Corporal Stanton
stood, grabbing his section and running between the trains toward the safety of
the Bosque. Once there, he would provide cover for the next section to move,
and one by one we would make our final extraction from the battlefield.

The sergeant major
pointed. ‘Onto the stretcher, Moralee!’

I obeyed, sitting
back down onto the stretcher ready for it to be lifted by my section.

I watched as more
civilians crushed onto the bridge in a desperate frenzy, and more of them
plummeted from the edge. A child screamed as she was washed away, and her
mother leapt after her.

‘Lie down, Andy,’
Puppy ordered.

I ignored him,
mesmerised by the horror on the bridge and the roar of gunfire to my west.
There were more explosions, sending great plumes of earth and rubble soaring
above the depot.

‘Next section!’ Mr
Barker yelled over the noise. ‘GO!’

Corporal Tamara’s
section hurried away.

‘Andy,’ Puppy said
again, ‘lay down.’

My head lowered as I
looked at my torn combats, and the dried blood where frag had broken through my
armour. What was I now, but skin and flesh and bone? The remnants of my soul
had long since left me, replaced only by misery and despair. What would I do
when I returned to Paraiso, my heart mortally scarred by what I had seen in the
Bosque? What would I do when I finally returned to my family, and what would I
tell them? That I had sat back and watched while innocent men, women and
children were killed?

I suddenly remembered
Yulia’s words, when she had spoken to me beside the bunkers. I remembered them
as vividly as though she were standing right next to me ... ‘
No life is ever
worthless. We all have an important part to play in this world.’

‘No!’ I blurted.

Puppy frowned, while
the rest of the section looked at me in alarm. ‘What?’

‘I’m going back.’

Before anybody could
stop me I lifted myself from the stretcher.

Puppy placed a
restraining hand on my shoulder, and several troopers moved as though to help
him. ‘Andy, what the fuck are you doing?’

‘This is wrong,
Puppy,’ I said, shrugging their hands away. ‘You go. I’m going back there.’

Puppy followed my
outstretched arm toward the fire fight raging on the far side of the depot. ‘Are
you out of your mind?’

I broke into a run,
and there was a sudden commotion behind me as several troopers tried to reach
out and grab at my daysack.

‘Where’s he going?’
the sergeant major bellowed. ‘Stop him!’

Puppy somehow managed
to catch up with me, grasping me firmly by the arm, just before I rounded the
nearest carriage.

‘Let me go, Puppy!’

‘No, Andy! We know
you’ve had a hard ride, but please don’t do anything stupid!’

I kept pulling,
dragging him with me. Even with my injuries, I was far stronger than Puppy was.
The battle nearby intensified.

My eyes became wet.
‘You get the section home, mate. They don’t need me.’

‘Of course they do!
They love you, Andy!’

I shook my head,
disbelieving.  ‘I have to do this, Puppy. Let me go.’ My eyes glared into his
with a passion that caused him to let go of my combats as if burnt.

I ran toward the
battlefield, not once looking back. I weaved through the carriages, ducking as
stray darts punched through the metal, ricocheting across the depot. The FEA
were nearby, I could hear their shouts and the wails of their injured.

A fresh wave of pain
shot across my body, and my visor flashed at me, warning me that I was losing
blood again. I knew without checking my datapad that the clotting chemical
injected into my body had loosened, and I didn’t have long. It didn’t matter
anymore. I might die, but at least I would die doing something good.

At last I found the
FEA fighting along the length of a train on the edge of the depot, exchanging
fire with Guard soldiers in the forest. Many of them cowered, terrified at the
ferocity of their new enemy. Like the Loyalists, the Guard were a well-trained
and determined force, far outmatching the child soldiers of the FEA.

Keeping my head as
low as possible, I bounded toward the train.

‘Get up and fight!’ I
bellowed at them. Suddenly absorbed with rage, I stalked along the length of
the train like an instructor on Uralis, gripping cowering soldiers by the
collar and lifting them up to the carriage windows.

I fired a volley of
guided grenades over the top of the train, watching as they screamed into the
forest.

Without waiting for
the grenades to detonate, I continued my march along the carriages. Keep
firing! Show these bastards what you’re made of! Give them everything!’

A voice called out
from behind me. ‘What are you doing here, Andy?’ Yulia was crouched behind me,
staring at me as though I was mad.

‘If I’m going to
die,’ I said, ‘it may as well be here!’

She flinched as a
spray of darts strafed along the length of the train. ‘There are better places
to die!’

‘Are there?’ I
laughed bitterly. ‘I thought you sent Makito to kill me!’

Yulia looked at me in
surprise. ‘He tried to kill you?’

‘He followed me on my
patrol with a section of Guardsmen.’

She nodded slowly, ignoring
a spray of sparks nearby. ‘Bhasin will have sent him.’

She looked around at
her comrades as they fought, then into the forest beyond. My visor identified
scores of targets, flickering as the guardsmen moved from cover to cover. They
were less than twenty metres away.

‘We cannot hold for
long,’ she said gloomily.

I nodded. ‘They’ll
attempt to attack from either end of the train.’

‘I know. I have sent
some of my men to either end, but I do not have enough soldiers to do anything
else.’

‘Then you cannot hold
the line here,’ I decided. ‘There’s only one thing left to do …’

Yulia knew where I
was going. ‘We must attack.’

I gave her a grim
smile. ‘It’s the best form of defence.’

I quickly rummaged
through my pouches, spilling all of my grenades onto the floor. There were five
in all, and I gave Yulia two of them.

‘Shall we?’

The corner of her
mouth twitched. ‘Why not?’

There was no time to
properly organise the FEA platoon into teams or sections, they were an
assortment of soldiers who Yulia had collected from across the city - defectors
who disagreed with killing the civilians in Dakar.

‘Listen in!’ I
shouted over the roar of battle, hoping that the soldier’s headsets would
translate for me. ‘You will all have a number! You on the far left - you will
be number one! Do you understand?’

The furthest soldier
to my left nodded, before continuing to fire into the trees.

‘You will be two!’

Another nod.

I carried on, ‘One,
two, one, two, one, two …’

Yulia watched as I
gave every soldier a number, walking along the length of the train as darts
continued to whizz overhead. As I did so something exploded against one of the
carriages, and I ignored the cloud of dust that passed over me.