LANCEJACK (The Union Series)

by Richards, Phillip

  ‘Major Ruckheim is at the building where the arrests took place,’ the boss admitted, ‘We have no comms with him.’

  ‘Yes,’ the chief agreed, almost smugly, ‘The rebels have turned the local network against your own, which is a very dangerous situation for you. You have been very stupid. We can conduct arrests ourselves, we do not need you to do it for us! In all of my time here, this has never happened! If you have intelligence to be exploited, then you should share it. We are, after all, on the same side! You have given the rebels a massive piece of propaganda; Earthling troops shooting up a city in the southern continent. Not good.’

  Mr Moore was silent. Whether the chief of police was right or not, there wasn’t much point in arguing with him.

  The chief paused thoughtfully, ‘We must get you out of the city,’ he said, ‘Before the people decide to riot.’

  ‘What about the rebels?’

  ‘The rebels are gone,’ he said knowingly, ‘They know when they are outgunned, and they have done what they set out to do.’

  ‘Which is…?’

  He pointed toward the burning LSVs, ‘They have created mayhem, and made you look like the bad guys.’

  The platoon commander said nothing, as I began to realise that the chief was right. Why hadn’t we simply given the police the intelligence they needed to act, rather than going in ourselves? Surely the police weren’t corrupted by NELA?

  ‘You will all be escorted back to Eindhoven by my men,’ the chief said: It was an order, not a suggestion. ‘I will have more trucks pick up your major and his men and we will go back together. There is enough room on the vehicles for all of you. You need to be out of sight, so that tempers do not flare.’

  Mr Moore spluttered at the idea, ‘We’re not being escorted out of the city like criminals!’

  ‘You have a better idea?’

  ‘We will patrol back to Eindhoven.’

  ‘No. If you patrol back, you will risk a riot. Then you will need to explain to your CO why you shot and stabbed more civilians trying to get out.’

  ‘How the hell do I know you’re not just a trick to get us outside?’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘If they’re a hoax, then it’s the most elaborate hoax I’ve…’

  ‘Thank you, Moralee,’ Mr Moore almost spat my name, and I flinched, ‘If I want your opinion then I’ll bloody well ask for it. I’ve already heard about you risking the lives of your section with your messing around!’

  My teeth clenched and my eyes burned with rage. What was he on about?

  Sensing my anger, and seeing my rifle still aimed at his chest, the chief of police looked slightly nervous for the first time.

  ‘Boss,’ I heard Johnno’s voice, trying to soothe the platoon commander’s flaring temper, ‘He’s genuine. Trust me.’

  ‘I don’t care if he is who he says he is,’ he argued, ‘I will not be bundled into a police wagon like a criminal!’

  ‘Boss, we have casualties,’ Johnno insisted, ‘One of them has been missing his foot for almost an hour. Patterson has internal bleeding and I can’t treat him. We need to swallow our pride, and get out of here.’

  ‘And if this is a trick?’

  ‘Then we kill as many as we can before we go.’

  Silence. Our boss was thinking, while my temper still simmered. What was he taking so long to think about? We had no alternative but to trust the man.

  ‘Fine. Let’s do it.’

  There was a shared sigh of relief, before Johnno called out for the platoon to collapse into him with all of the casualties.

  We loaded onto the police trucks as the sky turned turquoise in the morning sun, anxious to get out of the area as quickly as possible. The trucks disgorged their police cargo, each dressed like the chief and armed with MSG-20s like ours, except that they were painted black and not red.

  If the police shared the chief’s anger at us for descending upon their city then they didn’t show it, instead they assisted us loading our casualties into their vehicles and ordered curious civilians back into their homes.

  It felt weird to be hopping onto civilian vehicles in the same spot where the platoon had fought a drawn out fire fight with the enemy, but then we were not fighting a war like the one I had known before. Our enemy had disappeared. Aided by their unrivalled mastery of the electronic battlefield, NELA had the ability to melt away into the city as suddenly and effortlessly as they had appeared, but their greatest weakness was their need for the support of the New Earth population. At the moment, it seemed, the rebels had decided that the population of Nieuwe Poort were not ready to see their local police come under attack.

  Johnno oversaw the load plan of the platoon and organised us as we should be for any vehicle or dropship move. Just because we were hitching a lift in police vehicles didn’t mean that we were perfectly safe, and so we needed to be able to fight as soon as we stepped back onto the ground. Johnno ensured that each section had its own truck and weren’t split up, with the fourth vehicle carrying the platoon sergeant’s group, a five man grouping that included Johnno himself, two smart launchers carried by two of the most senior troopers in the platoon and a two man work party for moving ammo and casualties. He made sure that as many of the casualties as possible went into his vehicle, though two had to be kept in the section vehicles because there wasn’t enough room for all of them to go in one. We took Patterson, who still remained unconscious. The boss and his signaller - who was utterly useless without the platoon net - went into one section's vehicle.

  ‘Let’s go, lads,’ Konny hurried us into our vehicle once Patterson had been placed into the middle of the crew compartment. I glared at him as I passed him, but he looked away.

  ‘I don’t like this one bit,’ Jackson said to me as he buckled himself into his seat, looking around nervously at the unfamiliar compartment.

  ‘Me neither,’ I replied as I joined him, still looking over at Konny.

  The section commander was clearly pretending that I wasn’t there. He had been talking to Mr Moore, I knew it, and he had spun a little story to cover his arse in case any of the blokes said anything. We were going to be having words, he and I, I decided, when the time was right.

  With the trucks loaded and the sun slowly rising, we left to meet up with the conscripts and make our way back to Eindhoven.

  #

  The conscripts had suffered terribly at the hands of the enemy, we discovered. Whether the rebels had executed the perfect ambush or the conscripts had simply reacted poorly we would never know, but I felt their pain as we unloaded from our trucks to help them load their own casualties.

  There were at least ten injured, which was over a third of their number. At least one conscript was dead, he was having his scattered remains picked up off the street and thrown into a plastic bag by his mates. As I watched the conscripts carry out their grim task one of them began to retch, and his comrade had to yank the respirator away from his face before he puked inside it.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Okonkwo gasped. The troopers of the section forgot themselves and stood in a cluster beside the police truck, their minds struggling to come to terms with what they were seeing. I knew the feeling that they were experiencing – horror and revulsion - and I felt it too, though perhaps to a lesser extent. I had seen much death and disfigurement in my relatively short service for the Union, but I hadn’t become indifferent to it. The day that happened, I believed, I would cease to be human.

  Nevertheless, I didn’t want the morale of the lads to plummet any lower by appearing to be upset by the gruesome spectacle.

  ‘Spread out, lads, and observe your arcs while we wait to get tasked,’ I ordered, ‘Stay professional.’

  I waited for Konny to do or say something whilst the section quickly took up fire positions either side of the street, and eventually he noticed my impatient stare. I raised an eyebrow expectantly.

  Konny suddenly realised that he had a job to do and snapped back to reality
with a jolt, ‘I’m, er… Gonna see the boss for instructions.’

  I nodded. That would do.

  The platoon had effectively surrounded the target building, I saw, and the street had become swamped with police, allowing for the conscripts to safely tend to their wounded. It appeared that the conscripts had come under attack from their own LSVs, judging by the damage that had been done to the street, forcing them to take refuge indoors. A pair of burnt out LSVs further up the street confirmed my assumption.

  ‘It’s crazy, isn’t it?’ My headset translated a voice from beside me.

  Our police driver had stood right beside me by the truck.

  ‘What is?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s crazy that we still kill each other. After the war, the people of New Earth should want peace. Instead they want this,’ he pointed at the bag of human meat being sealed by a pair of conscripts.

  ‘You’re from Earth?’

  The policeman laughed, ‘Of course not, I was born here. Sometimes, I wish that I wasn’t. There is too much death here. Perhaps it will be better when you are gone, I think.’

  ‘You think the Union will give New Earth independence?’

  He shrugged, ‘Maybe. Eventually the Union will become fed up with this planet. Its people will not accept all of this slaughter forever.’

  ‘I don’t think you understand the mentality of the Union,’ I said with a grim smile, ‘We will never give up New Earth, and neither will Russia.’

  The people at home had very little knowledge of the conflict in the Alpha Centauri system other than propaganda released by the military. The Union and its Russian allies controlled all travel to and from Earth, and they both shared a common interest in keeping their populations keen to continue the fight. Even if the people did decide they wanted to let go of the first planet ever to be colonized by mankind, they didn’t really have a choice. New Earth was of great strategic importance, to the military as well as the corporations keen to take advantage of its high-tech manufacturing industry. If the planet was given independence, then the Chinese would only invade a month later.

  The policeman walked away from me and ordered another building crowd of civilians back into their homes.

  I found myself wondering what the people thought. Were they on our side, indifferent, or completely against us? Surely they knew that it was the Union that had liberated them from Chinese rule? To be fair, half of the population of New Earth were Chinese, from the era when the colonial powers had divided the planet and co-existed peacefully. But the people of Nieuwe Poort were European colonists, they ought be on our side.

  ‘They don’t want the Chinese either,’ Sergeant Evans had said once, when somebody had suggested that the New Earthers were traitors, ‘They just want to be free.’

  ‘Andy,’ Konny’s voice pulled me back to reality, ‘Johnno wants a work party to help with casualties. The rest of the blokes will stay here.’

  ‘No worries,’ I said flatly, and called over Okonkwo and O’Leary, both of whom appeared strong enough to carry casualties with ease and weren’t burdened by heavy weapons.

  It didn’t take long to help the conscripts onto the trucks, as there were plenty of extra hands to help between us and the police. We were in a hurry to get moving, since our communication network was still down and the enemy might be preparing for another attack. Also we were becoming increasingly wary of our casualties, some of whom had received no specialist treatment for well over an hour. Eindhoven had a medical facility, but nobody had ever thought to take any medics out on the ground with us, we had never needed them in the city before. All troopers and conscripts were trained to carry out basic life support and the treatment carried out by our combats automatically was often enough, but there was a limit to how much we could do for the severely injured. We needed to get out fast.

  ‘We could take them back to the hospital?’ a policewoman suggested to Johnno as we moved a bloodied conscript who had lost both his legs onto a stretcher. He was barely conscious, and he whimpered quietly when we set him down.

  ‘No,’ Johnno answered, ‘We have what we need at Eindhoven. Don’t worry mate, you’ll be alright,’ he raised his voice to speak to the injured conscript and squeezed his shoulder gently, before a mixture of troopers and police took him away.

  ‘Our hospital is closer,’ the policewoman insisted, ‘And well equipped.’

  ‘I said no,’ Johnno snapped angrily, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s the last of the casualties,’ I told him, and he nodded slowly.

  ‘Those poor bastards.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Right, let’s get the boys back in the trucks! Dave!’

  A conscript caked in blood from head-to-toe looked over to us from the back of one of the trucks, ‘Yes?’

  ‘You happy that’s all your blokes accounted for?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ the translation sounded chirpy in my headset, but I knew the man would be anything but happy. He was the platoon sergeant for the conscripts, and he had lost half of his men. It was their blood that coated him.

  ‘I’m loading up, tell the major to give us a horn blast when he wants to move off,’ Johnno then shouted so that the whole platoon could hear, ‘Prepare to move! Load up! Section commanders give me a shout when you’re good to go!’

  I took one last look about the ruined street as troopers and conscripts ran to their vehicles. I would never look down on those conscripts again, because whether they were poorly trained or not, they were still young boys who had endured the terrible horrors of war.

  The local civilians were growing in confidence, venturing out of their homes despite the police insistence that they stay inside. Men, women and children came to see the broken Union soldiers fleeing from their city.

  As I looked at the civilians I suddenly saw somebody that I swore I recognised; a tall man somewhere in his late twenties staring over at us from where he stood at the top of a cellar stairwell. His towering figure and chiselled jaw gave him an almost god-like appearance. He was wearing a civilian visor, which made it difficult to tell, but he was looking right at me, as if he knew who I was.

  Johnno patted my arm, and I jumped, ‘Andy, let’s go, mate.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I looked back into the crowds, but the man was gone.

  We loaded back onto our truck, carefully squeezing around Patterson’s motionless body lying down the middle of the compartment. Konny shouted out to Johnno that our section were all in, who returned a thumbs up as he walked the length of our convoy to ensure that nobody had been left behind, as was his job. Once Johnno was happy that we were all good to go, he would then tell Mr Moore, who would move when he was ready, leading the convoy back to Eindhoven with the conscripts bringing up the rear.

  I looked about at the frightened faces of the section. They had seen enough of what NELA could do to them, and the feeling of powerlessness was almost overwhelming.

  ‘Calm down, lads,’ I soothed, breaking the silence. I knew too well that it was those periods of silent contemplation that could eat at a trooper’s mind, ‘We’ll be back in Eindhoven soon. Stay focused.’

  ‘Why has nobody come for us?’ Jackson asked, ‘Somebody must have noticed what’s going on by now?’

  ‘Nobody has,’ Konny answered gloomily, ‘The boss briefed me.’

  Okonkwo frowned as he leant forward in his seat, ‘Briefed you what?’

  ‘The major’s signaller has been trying to get through to Eindhoven, but he got something else instead. It’s us, doing our patrol.’

  ‘What are you on about?’ Geany demanded rudely. I would have told him off for stepping well across the line between trooper and NCO, but curiosity had taken over. The hairs rose on my neck as I realised what Konny was getting at.

  Konny shook his head as he spoke, as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying, ‘NELA has duplicated our comms chatter. To everyone outside the city we sound like we’re still on task.’

  ‘Shit the bed!�
�� Leaman exclaimed as what Konny was saying sunk in.

  ‘What about the orbital platform?’ I asked, ‘Can’t it see us?’

  ‘We have no comms with it, so who knows, but I doubt it.’

  ‘Eindhoven know what’s going on, though,’ Geany said angrily, ‘They can hear us with their own ears, let alone on the net!’

  I grimaced at the outburst, ‘What are they gonna do? There’s barely enough of them to defend Eindhoven, let alone come for us.’

  ‘So what if, we get back to Eindhoven and we’re still cut off?’

  ‘I said they can’t come for us, I didn’t say they can’t do anything at all.’

  Geany sneered, ‘What else can they do? Get the kettle on?’

  I pointed a finger straight at Geany’s visor, ‘You want to remember who you’re talking to, mate!’

  ‘Oh yeah, sorry, Lance Corporal Moralee, Union Star, the greatest…’

  I roared so loud that even Konny jumped, ‘I don’t care about no fucking medal, you little piss stain! Who do you think you are? You talk like you’re one of the best troopers in the platoon, but all I see from you is shit! You are living proof that seniority counts for nothing, because right now I don’t know if I can trust you as far as I can throw you!’

  Geany was shocked into silence, as I still shook with rage, my finger still pointed at him like a cocked pistol.

  ‘Andy…’

  I switched fire, ‘And you want to shut up an’ all, Konny!’

  Stunned silence. I sat back in my seat and enjoyed it.

  It didn’t last. Okonkwo tested the water carefully, ‘Corporal?’

  ‘For God’s sake, call me Andy. I don’t like being called Corporal.’ It still didn’t feel right being called by my rank, though I wasn’t going to tell anyone that.

  ‘Andy, you said the blokes still in Eindhoven wouldn’t do anything. What are they gonna do then?’

  It was a genuine question, and I thought about it as we felt the vehicle begin to move, ‘If I was them I would try to alert the outside world.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said irritably, ‘By firing a few smart missiles in the direction of the nearest base?’