First To Fight (The Empire's Corps Book 11)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “On my mark,” Singh ordered, very quietly. “Lewis, I want you to take the lead.”

  “Aye, sergeant,” Lewis said. He’d told me he had a badge in EOD, as well as a number of other awards. “We could go through the wall ...”

  “Too much chance of causing a disaster,” Singh said. “We go through the door ... mark.”

  We moved as one; Lewis reached the door and checked it carefully, then picked the lock with a tool from his belt and kicked it open. There was a shout from inside, but no explosion; the bomb-makers must not have realised that the woman knew where they lived. We crashed inside, weapons at the ready; I opened fire with the stunner as soon as I saw three men, spraying their bodies with stun pulses. Civilians think that stunners work perfectly, but the truth is that even a thin layer of clothes can provide a certain degree of protection. The men collapsed; I shot them again, just to be sure, as Singh pushed past us and charged into the next room.

  “Four more in here,” Singh said.

  I followed him inside, my rifle raised. It looked like a schoolroom, one more fascinating than anything I’d seen on Earth. A handful of commonly-available household products lay on a large table, ready for conversion into IEDs; behind them, there were a number of military-grade detonators and a box of plastic explosives, thankfully not prepped for detonation. My instructors had had their doubts about the crap the Imperial Army used for its weapons - apparently, it was so hard to make it explode that it was sometimes impossible - but it might have worked in our favour. There hadn't been any time for the terrorists to blow the building and kill us, as well as their students.

  “Get upstairs,” Singh ordered, as we heard someone rattling overhead. “Hurry!”

  We ran up the stairs, abandoning caution. I unhooked a gas grenade from my belt and threw it into the room, then followed; the terrorists started to choke at once as yellow gas billowed through the room, in no condition for a fight. One of them managed to get to his feet; I slammed my rifle butt into his head, knocked him down and stunned him. The others were still puking helplessly as we stunned them, called it in and moved to the next room.

  “Fuck me,” Lewis said, as he peered inside. “If I’d done this in training ...”

  His voice trailed off. I peered past him and swore. The room was a safety violation that would have had Bainbridge screaming, let alone a safety inspector from the Imperial Army’s Inspectorate General. He'd probably have a heart attack the moment he saw the collection of detonators, makeshift explosives and a number of highly-unpleasant chemical compounds. A spark in the wrong place and the entire building would have gone up like a baby nuke. There was no number of push-ups that could make up for such an error, although Bainbridge would probably have invented some new numbers. Anyone stupid enough to get through Boot Camp and then store explosives so carelessly would be discharged through an airlock, rather than merely kicked off the training course.

  “You would probably have been summarily strangled by the instructor,” I said. “Is it safe for the moment?”

  “I wouldn't count on it,” Lewis said, grimly. He shook his head in disbelief. “If the acid had melted through the containers and dripped onto the detonators ... they’d have killed themselves without ever knowing what hit them.”

  I keyed my radio. “Sergeant, we have a Code Black here,” I said. “We need to evacuate the building until it can be made safe.”

  “Understood,” Singh said. “Lewis?”

  “I’d prefer not to stay here any longer than necessary,” Lewis said. He ran through a brief outline of what we’d found. “This isn't a fixed IED, Sergeant. There’s no way to disarm it by removing the detonator or the explosives.”

  “Snap the scene, then grab the prisoners and get them outside,” Singh ordered, after a moment. “We’ll call in additional EOD experts before proceeding.”

  “Aye, Sergeant,” I said.

  Lewis took a number of photographs as I checked the rest of the upper floor, then returned to the first room and began to secure the prisoners. One of them looked to be halfway to choking to death on his own vomit; I hesitated, just for a second, before slapping him on the back to clear his throat. There was a need to interrogate them, after all. Lewis joined me after a moment and together we carried the bastards downstairs and dumped them in the street. 2nd Platoon had secured the surroundings and started bellowing warnings for the locals to stay inside and away from the windows. I had a feeling everyone would heed their commands.

  “Got crowds forming on the edge of the perimeter,” a voice said, through the intercom. “I think they’re being stirred up.”

  “Snipers, deal with the agitators,” Webb ordered. “Helicopters are inbound.”

  I looked down at the prisoners as the remainder of the EOD officers appeared. The prisoners looked young, save for a couple who were clearly older, if not wiser. Their scarred hands suggested that they’d spent years working with dangerous compounds. Probably the bomb-makers, I decided, here to teach the youth of Charlie City how to make bombs and blow up a few of their enemies. Their students looked around fifteen to nineteen; I was surprised, despite myself, to recognise that two of them were definitely young girls. The locals didn't have any cultural history of treating women as second-class citizens, according to the files, but they’d definitely developed a habit of protecting their wives and daughters from everyone else.

  Except that rat bastard sent his daughter to become an unwilling bomber, I thought, fighting down the urge to vomit. Did he give her up willingly or was he taking his helplessness out on his wife?

  The helicopters swooped overhead as we started to load the prisoners into armoured vans. By the time they woke up, they should be in the POW camp; if they woke up sooner, if they had time to realise what had happened to them, I really didn't care. We searched them carefully, removed a number of weapons and tools, then dumped them inside. I caught sight of Joker - he’d been sent to 2nd Platoon - and nodded as he picked up one of the terrorists and carried him into the van. He nodded back. We hadn't really had time to catch up since we’d arrived on Moidart, but we’d have a chance once we returned to the FOB.

  “This place is as safe as it is ever going to be,” Lewis said, over the radio. “We’ve separated the detonators and acid from the batteries and explosives, but none of it is particularly safe.”

  “Hold the building until the SSE team arrives,” Captain Webb directed.

  The devil - and Sergeant Singh - makes work for idle hands. I was directed to join the convoy transporting the prisoners back to the FOB, then to return, escorting the SSE team along the way. They looked professional, something that surprised me; I’d heard too many horror stories about the regulars. And they looked surprisingly enthusiastic. Between the royalist incompetence and the sheer number of moles in the government, they rarely had a chance to work their magic.

  I watched as boxes upon boxes of material - some explosive, some not - were carried out of the building and loaded into the vans. The SSE team were good at searching for evidence; they went over the building quickly, missing nothing. I hadn't realised just how much crap the terrorists had moved inside until I saw it moved out. Weapons and explosives weren't the only thing they found, too. There were records, a number of ciphers and detailed information on a hundred possible targets. I wasn't too pleased - and nor was Singh, judging from the explosion - to note that they had a set of plans for our FOB. Only our defences had deterred them from attacking in force.

  “The building is clear,” Captain Graham reported, finally. I was pulling guard duty near Captain Webb’s makeshift command post when he appeared. “I think we’re not going to be able to pull anything else out of here.”

  “Then we can get back to the FOB,” Captain Webb said. “Does the building need to be sanitised?”

  “I’d advise sending a clean-up crew,” Graham said. “There were a lot of dangerous chemicals in there, sir, and some of them are poisonous.”

  Webb snorted, bitterly. “There�
�s small hope of that happening, Tom.”

  “I know,” Graham said. “All we can really do is post warnings and hope the locals pay heed.”

  I knew, too. The royalists wouldn't bother to clean up the house, not when they barely had the resources to hold the line against the rebels. It was far more likely that some of the hundreds of homeless people in the city would move into the house, only to find themselves poisoned. Maybe we should have simply destroyed the house ... but that would have earned us more enemies. The locals wouldn't have thanked us for destroying perfectly good housing.

  “Mount up,” Singh ordered. “Time to move.”

  There was no attempt to keep us from returning to the FOB, somewhat to my surprise. The rebels had hit a couple of positions on the other side of the city, but otherwise they’d cut their losses and kept their heads down. I couldn't help feeling that it boded ill for the future. The enemy commanders had recognised a losing prospect and backed away, rather than trying to save their people. It suggested they were smarter than their royalist counterparts ...

  And, as it turned out, they were.

  The woman? She was sent into a witness protection program and, after much bureaucratic wrangling, was granted an exit permit. I have no idea what happened to her after that, but the corps does take care of those who help it. Her husband was sent to a hard labour camp, where he was presumably worked to death. Webb told us his fate two days after the raid, just so we knew. None of us felt particularly sorry for him.

  And really, why should we? He’d sold his daughter to the rebels, who’d turned her into an unknowing bomber and killed her. They wouldn't have taken her without his permission, not when it would have alienated the civilians. He didn't deserve any sympathy at all, certainly not from us. We were the ones trying to stop the bombers.

  I just wish I’d had the chance to pull the trigger myself.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Social breakdown, as I have noted elsewhere, leads to a collapse in what might be considered civilised standards of behaviour. Certainly, there is always an upsurge in looting, rape and murder as the threat of punishment recedes, but there are also darker forms of behaviour that suddenly become permissible. Selling one child to have the food to feed others, for example, suddenly seems a justifiable form of behaviour.

  And, once you get used to justifying horror, it’s a short step to justifying something worse.

  -Professor Leo Caesius

  “Show a leg,” Singh ordered, the following morning. “Captain’s giving a briefing in twenty minutes.”

  We cursed, grabbed our weapons and hastily stuffed ration bars in our mouths. It had to have been arranged hastily or we would have been given more warning. I just hoped it wasn't a combat jump or something that required careful preparation. As much as I was starting to like my new teammates, we weren’t ready to switch from ground patrols to orbital insertions without more practice. I swallowed pieces of my ration bar - I’m sure the flavours get worse every year - and hurried into the briefing room. It didn't look to have changed overnight.

  “Intelligence reports that we have managed to discomfit the rebels,” Captain Webb said, shortly. The Imperial Army might operate on a strict need-to-know basis (with senior officers determining who needs to know) but the marines take a more sensible policy of sharing everything with the troops. “The bomb school we found and knocked out yesterday was their principle training zone for Charlie City. Right now, there's a shortage of bombs in the vicinity.”

  “Oh, what a pity,” Lewis said, deadpan.

  Webb smiled, rather dryly. “Indeed it is, Lewis,” he said. “No doubt you’ll be pleased not to have to disarm so many unpleasant surprises over the next two weeks.”

  He looked back at us. “Unfortunately, the rebels - feeling the urge to keep their operational tempo - have started moving more bomb-makers and their kits into the city,” he continued, his voice hardening. “I don't think I need to tell you what that means. Higher command wishes to intercept the transports before they arrive. We’re going to be taking over the checkpoints along the ring road and searching every vehicle entering or leaving the city.”

  I looked at the map. Charlie City was surrounded by a highway that, in more peaceful times, allowed the population to drive rapidly around the city without having to pick their way through the middle of the town. There were twenty-one junctions where cars and trucks could leave the ring road or drive in from the outlying towns. Each of them would have to be secured ... I cursed, under my breath. There were only a hundred marines assigned to the company. We couldn't send a single fire team to each potential point of entry.

  “The Rangers will be joining us,” Webb said. “They’re going to take responsibility for junctions one to ten, we’ll be taking responsibility for junctions eleven to twenty. Junction twenty-one will be closed. This means spreading ourselves a little thin, but a regiment of imperial soldiers and several battalions of royalist troops will be in position to back us up if necessary.”

  I couldn't help noticing that no one seemed particularly pleased to hear that. The imperials were something of a mixed bag - their units ranged from very good to appallingly bad - but no one had had anything good to say about the royalists. As far as I could tell, the general consensus was that they would either run from the battlefield as soon as the shooting started or turn their guns on their supposed allies. We neither liked nor trusted them and they were quite happy to return the favour.

  “Follow the standard procedures for searching vehicles,” Webb concluded. “And take prisoners, if you can. We need more intelligence.”

  I wanted to ask what they’d learned from the bomb-makers, but I kept my mouth shut. The briefing ended shortly afterwards and we hurried outside to our vehicles. Singh was in a right temper, checking everything time and time again; it took me several minutes to realise that he was annoyed because a handful of marines were being held back to defend the FOB. We were paring our defences right down to the bone. If the enemy realised we were dangerously exposed, we might come home to find the FOB in ruins.

  This is a hell of a war, I thought, as the driver started the engine. It was dark outside, but the sun was already glimmering over the horizon. We can't trust our friends any more than we can trust our enemies.

  The drive to the checkpoint was shorter than I’d expected, largely because there was almost no military traffic on the ring road. (Civilians had one lane out of four; someone had helpfully separated their lane from everyone else with barbed wire.) The junction itself looked remarkably simple; a pair of exit lanes, a concrete bridge and a road leading into the distance. A handful of cars were already making their way past the checkpoint, which didn't look particularly secure. The royalist guards seemed more interested in smoking and patting down pretty girls than actually searching for high explosives and detonators.

  I sucked in my breath as I saw the royalists for the first time. They were called redshirts by the marines, but I hadn't realised that it was literal. The blood-red uniforms they wore would make them incredibly obvious targets to anyone with a sniper rifle, while the way they carried their weapons suggested they didn't have much practice on the shooting range, let alone firing at moving targets. Maybe red uniforms would stop the blood from showing, thus not demoralising the troops, but I suspected it was wasted effort. A man dropping to the ground after being shot does tend to be rather disconcerting.

  “Get your men to the roundabout and stop the flow of traffic,” Singh snapped, as he dismounted from the AFV. A redshirted officer looked astonished to be given orders and started to puff up like a balloon. “Don’t argue with me, just move!”

  “Watch your back,” Lewis warned, as we dismounted. “And watch the sergeant’s too.”

  I nodded. The other two fire teams hastened to set up a proper checkpoint, including prefabricated barriers to redirect the force of an explosion, while we covered the sergeant and kept a wary eye on the redshirts. I hoped, as the sergeant’s iron will worked its mag
ic, that he would just order them to return to their barracks and take the rest of the day off. It would be better to be outnumbered than have soldiers behind us who might easily take shots at us as well as the enemy.

  No such luck. The redshirts gathered at the far end of the bridge, doing as little as they could, while we finished setting up the checkpoint. A handful of cars and trucks appeared, horns honking loudly as they were told to wait; I prayed, inwardly, that none of them were manned by terrorists. They could have blown themselves up and taken a dozen other vehicles with them. As soon as we were ready, Singh placed a large sign at the roundabout, warning drivers that there was a checkpoint ahead, then walked back and waved for us to open the gate. Moments later, the first car drove into the killing zone and stopped.