‘That’s a bit dodgy, ain’t it?’
‘Why is it? They’re called smart missiles for a reason, they won’t detonate on friendly troops, but they would definitely wake everyone up!’
Jackson nodded excitedly, ‘That’s a good idea! Do you think that would work?’
‘Well, I don’t know, but failing that it won’t take long now for somebody to realise something’s up, what with half the population not going to work. The rebels can’t shut off an entire city and expect nobody to notice, no matter how good they are on the net.’
‘Fair one.’
We were picking up speed, which meant that all of the vehicles in the police convoy were moving. I peered through a tiny opening into the cab and the street beyond to see us weaving through rubble and the wrecked LSVs. Crowds continued to gather on the pavements.
The sun, Alpha Centauri Alpha, had lifted above the buildings to drive away the last of the shadows and caused the glass dome above us to shimmer brightly. Just as it had been shown on my tour in the simulators, Nieuwe Poort, with its magnificent buildings, marble arches and towering pillars was an architect’s dream. It was strange how a place so utterly beautiful could harbour such menace, I thought to myself.
I watched the angry faces of the Nieuwe Poort population who now lined the streets, growing in confidence as they hurled insults toward the convoy that carried the Union army out of their city. I remembered the strange man that I had recognised in amongst them. It couldn’t have been, could it? I could swear the man looked the spitting image of Sergeant Evan - Ev - my old platoon sergeant.
‘They hate us, don’t they,’ Jackson said almost sadly, hearing the shouts from outside.
It couldn’t have been him, there was no way. Ev went AWOL just before my old platoon returned to Earth two years ago, there was no way he would hang about in the capital city of a Union controlled province. Instead he would have escaped north to the Russians or hidden himself away somewhere in the country, somewhere nobody would ask any questions.
I looked over to Jackson, who awaited my answer, ‘Right now they hate us, yeah.’
Jackson paused thoughtfully, ‘Are we the bad guys?’
‘Shut up, Jacko,’ Okonkwo snapped almost instantly.
I thought about the question, and then sighed when I found the only answer I could give, ‘There are no good guys on New Earth, mate.’
‘Oh.’
Keen for some peace and quiet, I leaned back into my seat and closed my eyes.
8
Old Friends
A sudden collision woke me with a start, tossing my body toward Jackson on the other side of the compartment. My straps stopped me from colliding with him, hurling me back into my seat with my limbs still flailing.
‘What the f…?’
Konny screamed at the top of his voice, ‘BRACE!’
We had no time to react to what followed, because it happened so quickly I barely remember it. There was a blinding flash of light as something massive exploded against the side of the truck with such power that it rolled it right over onto its roof in no more than a second. Thick smoke engulfed me as I dangled helplessly from my seat, only held in place by my straps.
Something else exploded outside, and the vehicle rattled as some form of rubble or shrapnel showered across its hull.
My visor couldn’t adjust to the darkness, the smoke was hot, and it was interfering with both my thermal and image intensified viewing modes. The image flickered between the two for a second, before it eventually gave up. Somebody was shouting, I realised, as my dazed mind began to come back to its senses.
‘Oh my God! What the hell is going on?!’ It sounded like O’Leary.
‘Everyone alright?’ Konny’s voice asked in the darkness.
O’Leary continued with his string of curses.
We were trapped on what was now the ceiling, and I knew there was only one way down.
‘I’m gonna unclip myself,’ I warned, bracing my body.
‘Me too,’ Konny replied.
‘And me,’ I think the other voice was Okonkwo.
‘NO,’ I shouted, ‘We can’t all do it at once!’
If we all fell from our seats at once somebody would break a bone, if he hadn’t already. My sides smarted, but I was pretty confident that my armour had protected my ribs and organs from the roll.
I thought about how I was going to drop without knocking myself unconscious. The straps bit at my shoulders and made it hard for me to breathe, even with my respirator. I knew that we had to act fast, for outside our upturned vehicle I could clearly hear the sound of battle. It seemed the rebels didn’t care about what Nieuwe Poort thought of the police after all, for we were being ambushed once again.
‘Okonkwo,’ I called. He had been sat next to me.
‘Yeah?’
‘Give me your hand.’
I felt out in the dark and found Okonkwo’s hand searching for mine. I gripped it and placed it onto my strap buckle.
‘When I tell you to, unclip me.’
‘Okay.’
I gripped the straps where they connected to the seat with both of my hands and then braced myself again.
‘Do it!’
Okonkwo unclipped the buckle and I fell, my body suddenly released from the straps that held me in my seat. My bodyweight yanked at my arms with such force that my hands lost their grip on the straps and I fell the final distance face first onto the compartment roof, my rifle clattering against metal as I landed in a crumpled heap.
‘You alright?’ Okonkwo asked from above me just as a second crash announced Konny’s undignified descent.
I’d landed on top of something large . My eyes widened when I worked out what it was: Patterson on his stretcher. The roll had probably broken every last bone in his body; but a quick check of his datapad told me that he was dead. A snapped vertebrae. I swore.
‘Patterson’s dead,’ I announced, and cursed again. All that effort to keep him alive during the previous ambush, and he had died anyway.
The almost constant string of uttered swear words finished with another thud, as Konny released O’Leary, only to have him fall on top of him.
I knelt up and reached to feel Okonkwo’s helmet, and then managed to find his shoulders, ‘Unclip yourself, and I’ll help you down.’
‘I’m heavy,’ Okonkwo warned, and then released his buckle. He fell, and I just about managed to slow his fall enough for him not to crush me.
Something else exploded nearby, and the vehicle rattled again, hurrying us to make our escape.
‘What the hell, man? What is going on?’ O’Leary said again, and Leaman hissed at him to shut up.
‘Everyone down?’ Konny asked. A chorus of affirmations told him that the section had managed to unclip themselves and drop down to what was now the floor without injury. I had no doubt that there would be a few fractured ribs, but at that moment it was the least of our worries.
I saw a dim light through the smoke, Konny was trying to use his rifle torch, but it wasn’t much use. Our visors allowed us to see in the dark, but the darkness wasn’t the problem.
‘Can’t see a thing,’ he said, and I could hear him fumbling around in search of the handle to the rear door, a task made far more difficult in the upside down truck, ‘Got it!’
Konny grunted as he yanked on the handle as hard as he could.
‘You’ve got to push it up,’ Geany pointed out, ‘We’re upside down.’
‘I know that!’ Another angry grunt, and the handle squeaked in protest as it moved. He heaved against the door, and a crack of light appeared through the haze. The smoke rushed out of the gap, and I quickly began to make out the shapes of the huddle of troopers, crouched around their dead comrade on the roof of the flipped vehicle. The seats where we had sat had become the ceiling, the straps dangling down around us like party decorations gone wrong.
‘Give me a hand with the door,’ Konny ordered, and Geany joined him to brace against the metal and hea
ve. It moved a few centimetres, widening the shaft of light that sliced through the centre of the compartment like a blade made of dust.
‘Something’s jamming it,’ Geany said.
‘Keep pushing!’
They heaved again, and this time the door opened much further, allowing much more light into the compartment and the remainder of the smoke to escape.
There was the unmistakable sound of gunfire, and Konny pressed his visor up to the gap to steal a glance outside.
‘Jesus…’ he whispered to himself.
‘What?’
‘It’s just a mess,’ he said, and then heaved on the door again. I saw that a piece of masonry had been blocking it, but under Konny and Geany’s combined strength it eventually gave way and the door swung open.
I gaped. Where there had once been a wide street there was now a carpet of rubble and twisted metal, scattered even as far as the pavements and the buildings beyond. Twenty metres away from our upturned vehicle another police truck burned, a section of conscripts in cover behind it, two or three of whom were exchanging fire with an unseen assailant somewhere off to our left. Sparks showered from the metal hull of their vehicle as darts struck metal and ricocheted off into the air. Behind the embattled conscripts two men lay on stretchers, though I presumed that they were the casualties from the previous attack.
Konny paused at the door, as if he were thinking about what to do next. The section waited anxiously, while I grew impatient. Another explosion rocked the truck, and plates of marble clattered to the ground in front of us.
Our section commander remained frozen.
I was beginning to grow agitated, knowing that we needed to get of our vehicle. We were useless as long as we remained inside it, and if an enemy smart missile identified us inside the compartment it would surely go for us. We were an easy kill.
‘Konny,’ I demanded, ‘What are we doing?’
‘Wait!’
‘Wait for what, Konny?’
‘Just… Wait!’
I shook my head, and pushed through the section toward the gaping door where Konny remained rooted to the spot. I looked outside.
The enemy had set up another ambush almost identical to the last, except that this time it was much larger. I saw firing points all along the row of buildings to the side of the road as far as I could see. No single section of our convoy appeared to be spared by the hail of darts and as I watched, another volley of smart missiles screamed across the street, smacking into one of the trucks further along the line. It was carnage.
‘We need to get out of here,’ I told Konny, but he didn’t respond. He remained motionless, staring at the ambush as though mesmerised by it.
I remembered how I had responded to my first contact. I had cowered in fear at the bottom of a ditch whilst the rest of my section fought on. I knew all too well that the terror of battle could paralyze a man who had never experienced it before, and I realised then that Konny was in the grip of that terror.
I looked back at the section, and saw Leaman just behind me. His fingers twitched over his mammoth trigger guard as he saw the look in my eyes and anticipated my order.
‘Bring up that gun!’ I ordered.
Leaman squeezed himself between me and Konny, careful not to smash the massive weapon against the seats above him.
‘Up there!’ I pointed with an outstretched arm, and Leaman, poking his head out of the gaping doorway, nodded enthusiastically. Like the rest of us, he was happy to be fighting outside, and wasn’t too keen to stay inside the claustrophobic compartment anymore. Nothing made a trooper feel better in a bad situation than to fire that thing! Somebody once told me that firing the mammoth in contact was like a drug that a trooper could become addicted to, such was the power it gave him.
‘Give me rapid!’
Leaman obeyed, quickly bringing the mammoth to bear around the side of the door. He fired, and it roared as it began to eat into its ammunition box, spitting out pieces of link onto the street.
‘Let’s get out of here!’ I called back to the section, grabbing Konny by his sleeve. Pulling the section commander with me I ran past Leaman, around the right side of the truck and out of line of sight to the enemy. I threw myself against the metal hull of the vehicle, tucking in as much as I could for protection from ricochets. The section quickly peeled in behind me and Konny, leaving only Leaman behind, still firing his mammoth.
I realised instantly what had caused our vehicle to flip. One of our own LSVs had emerged from a narrow street, crashed into the side of us and detonated all of its smart missiles at once. The robotic vehicle now sat dormant a few metres away, its dented hull blackened with soot.
I pointed at Jackson, ‘Get your gun on the opposite side of the vehicle!’
Jackson nodded and quickly moved to find a fire position.
I pointed again, this time at Geany and Okonkwo, ‘Use your grenades. Fire them from behind the vehicle, so you can stay in cover!’
They understood. You didn’t need to see the enemy when firing the little guided grenades, they could pick out the targets for themselves.
As the section weapons began to open up, I ran to the cab where Jackson was firing from behind twisted panels of metal.
I had expected the worst. Two Nieuwe Poort policemen had been in the front of our vehicle, including the one that I had spoken to outside the target building. Now nothing remained of them. The combined detonation of all of the LSVs missiles had spared our compartment, instead tearing through the cab and spreading it and its occupants half way across the street. At least they died instantly, I told myself, though it was little consolation.
Our convoy had been struck by two LSVs, at two different points along its length. The other had struck one of the conscript vehicles a few hundred metres behind us, and enemy fire harried the entire length of our stricken convoy. Several other vehicles were burnt or destroyed, suggesting that even more smart missiles had been used during the initiation of the ambush, either by the enemy or another LSV.
‘Three section! Konny!’ A voice shouted from the truck in front of us, trying to grab our attention. It was Johnno, who had managed to unload the casualties from his vehicle and now remained pinned behind it with his work party. His two smart launcher crew were preparing their weapons for the next LSV to arrive, for we had no idea exactly how many more were in our enemies hands.
Konny was incapable of commanding the section, and so I decided that it was me who should answer for him.
‘Yeah?’ I shouted back over the noise. My whole section were firing.
‘You all okay?’
I shook my head, ‘Patterson’s dead!’
Johnno paused to tap the information onto his datapad. It might sound ridiculous to somebody who has never been in such a situation, but it was entirely possible for a platoon sergeant to actually forget the casualties and fatalities that his platoon sustained if he didn’t keep a record of it. Without the platoon net, everything needed to be done by hand.
‘Ok! Hang in there, mate!’
Easier said than done, I thought, as I turned back to the section. We were in cover, but it was hardly the best cover to be in. We had no protection to our rear, so if we were hit from behind we would be massacred, with nowhere left to hide. Ordinarily an ambush where the victim was engaged from both sides was tactically unsound, because it risked the ambush force shooting its own. It would also be almost impossible to control, but our enemy didn’t play by our rules, the rebels did whatever they wanted.
Our situation was dire. We were fixed in position by an enemy who had managed to turn our weapons against us so effectively that they actually had us outmatched. We were bogged in by a huge number of casualties and destroyed vehicles, leaving us almost completely incapable of manoeuvre, and it wouldn’t be long until we started running low on ammunition as well. For the first time I realised that my time might be up. I had been living on borrowed time ever since the invasion, and now finally death was catching up with me. I d
idn’t want to die, but I think at that time I accepted that it was inevitable.
‘Andy!’ A voice called. I ignored the voice, my mind racing as I tried to think of a way to save my platoon from the inevitable. We had to attack, it was the only answer, but it meant splitting our platoon in order to leave protection for the casualties, and conducting an attack onto an enemy with superior numbers with virtually no decent fire support to speak of.
‘Andy!’ The voice called again, only this time I realised that it wasn’t anybody to my left or right, it was coming from behind. I spun round, raising my rifle to confront the source of the voice.
My jaw dropped. It was Ev! Clear as day it was him, dressed in civilian clothes and crouching in the same narrow street that the LSV had used to sneak up on us. In one hand he gripped a civilian respirator, in the other he held a pistol that remained pointed to the ground. I ignored a dart striking the twisted metal of the cab and narrowly missing my leg, unable to believe what I was seeing.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ I shouted.
Geany, having just fired another grenade into buildings opposite, stopped to see who I was talking to.
Ev ignored the question, ‘Take down the roof!’
‘What? Why?’
‘Your cavalry are here, but they’re on the other side of the city. Shoot out the roof and they will see you!’
My eyes narrowed suspiciously, ‘How would you know that?’
‘I just know!’
I looked back toward the battle. On my right side, the conscripts were taking casualties, and even more of them were stopping to try to treat their injured friends. To my left, my own platoon of highly trained dropship infantry were pinned by a harrowing rate of fire. Brave though they were, they couldn’t last forever. Without re-enforcement they would fight to the bitter end like heroes, of that I had no doubt. I also had no doubt that their story would be told a thousand times, in every corner of the Union empire. But it wouldn’t change the fact that they were dead.
I glanced up at the roof above us. Unlike the much larger domes, it was barely a hundred metres above us, suspended by a series of arches that spanned the gap between the two rows of buildings either side of the street. A glimmer of hope formed in my mind. Maybe Ev was telling the truth and re-enforcements were nearby, and if he wasn’t what did it matter if we blew out the glass? We had our respirators, so the bad air wouldn’t kill us, and the glass was designed to shatter into tiny pieces too small to pose any threat to our armour. Besides, we would be blowing it outward, not inward.
LANCEJACK (The Union Series) Page 10