Because of the floor being divided almost entirely by glass it was unlike a normal room-by-room battlefield. The enemy could see and engage anybody as soon as they stood, and it had turned into a fierce fire fight that left the air thick with darts and the floor littered with shards of glass. Ahead of us the lead section had stalled for fear of taking another casualty, and as I watched a trooper was snatched backward as he was struck square in the chest by a dart.
‘Fucking hell,’ the boss cursed angrily as the platoon echoed the word that once again a man was down.
‘Boss,’ I called, catching his attention, and gestured with a sweeping motion of my hand. I could take my section right flanking. We weren’t in a room clearance environment anymore, it was an open battlefield, and so our tactics needed to adjust accordingly.
‘I know!’ The boss snapped angrily.
I ignored his annoyance, it was the section commander’s job to make suggestions, that was why the next reserve commander stayed so close to him in the first place.
To me that was as good as an affirmation, and so I turned to look for my section. They were being held to the rear by Johnno, just by the stairwell, ready to go. His work party and the second reserve were somewhere upstairs, left to protect our rear.
I tapped my helmet and Konny lead the section toward me in a half-crouch, their boots crunching noisily on broken glass.
‘Go to the far right hand corner,’ the boss ordered me, ‘Assault at a right angle only. Understand, Moralee?’
‘Sir,’ I growled. That’s Lance Corporal Moralee to you, cheese head.
‘Go.’
I needed no encouragement. As darts whizzed over our heads I quickly explained to my section that we were going on a right flanking assault onto a group of enemy on the far side of the building. Once I was happy that everyone knew what was about to happen I lead them round.
We kept our heads low as we ran around the edge of the building, keen for the enemy not to see us moving around for the kill. It was critical for the terrorists to remain distracted by the troopers to their front and not realise they were about to be hit from their flank until the last moment.
Wind whistled through the shattered windows of the Citadel, and as we came precariously close to the edge I could see the domes of Nieuwe Poort far below, reflecting the light of the setting sun. Flames licked over several buildings as the once peaceful city turned into a battleground.
I knew that the entire 5th Battalion had descended upon Nieuwe Poort, another two companies in all, whilst many more battalions of conscripts moved in by land. Major Ruckheim and two platoons of his conscripts had surrounded the base of the Citadel in order to catch the rebels as they tried to escape our advance.
I kept my rifle up into the aim as we snaked through office furniture and the few glass walls that hadn’t been destroyed, aware that the enemy might be trying to do the same as us, but we managed to get into position without any such encounter.
I stopped the section with a raised hand and ordered them to spread out facing the enemy with my fire team to my left and Konny’s to my right. Crouching low, I then raised my rifle just high enough above the office furniture to see with its camera.
We were now at the far end of the building on the enemies right flank, and I could see one or two of them ten or so metres away using overturned desks and cabinets as cover from view. They fired one or two darts in the direction of the platoon and then ducked, moving to a new position before firing again.
Good drills, I thought to myself, exactly what any good trooper would do. If you kept popping up from the same place you became an easy target, especially when the super high velocity darts fired by our weapons could punch through almost anything. Nearby a rebel lay dead beside a cabinet riddled with holes, as if to prove the point.
‘We will assault in fire teams,’ I whispered, my voice carrying across the section net, ‘Konny, you will give cover, my team will move first.’
‘Roger,’ he answered quietly.
‘Prepare to move,’ I ordered, and Jackson and Okonkwo braced themselves.
I looked back to Konny, ‘Rapid fire… now!’
As one, Konny’s fire team opened fire and I bolted forward like a wild dog let loose, sparks showering across my path as a stray dart struck metal and ricocheted.
Eyes wide with terror, the first rebel died before she even managed to bring her weapon to bear. Okonkwo shot the second as he emerged from behind a storage unit to see what was going on.
I rounded their cover and as I did so a third terrorist stood up almost right in front of me, turning to fire from the hip in a desperate bid for survival.
He was too late. I allowed my momentum to carry me into him, the blade of my bayonet piercing his chest. Designed for no purpose other than to kill, the bayonet was perfectly shaped to break the skin and then part the ribcage without embedding itself into the bone.
I pulled backward, and the deep channels cut by the bayonet squelched sickeningly as they allowed the blade to be released. Eyes bulging, the man collapsed with a gargling noise, and I stabbed him again on the floor for good measure. Blood ran freely from his wounds and onto the floor.
I fired a burst of darts into another nearby enemy marked on my visor and Okonkwo and Jackson joined in.
‘Konny, move!’
The enemy had not expected us, they had become transfixed upon an opponent fifty metres away, when suddenly they were being engaged by a section of troopers who were right on top of them. We swept through them with merciless efficiency, each fire team bounding forward five to ten metres whilst the other gave covering fire. Anybody we encountered in amongst the wreckage was either shot, or if he was unfortunate to be close enough, stabbed.
At one point somebody emerged from cover right at Leaman’s feet. and swung at him with some kind of blade, slashing him across the arm, but so bloodthirsty was the trooper that he kicked the man to the ground and beat at him with his mammoth, crushing his skull into a pulp.
‘Stop!’ I heard a voice calling as we advanced, and I wondered where it had come from. A hand raised toward the far corner of the building, ‘We surrender!’
I paused, confused. Nobody had ever surrendered to me before, the Chinese had been pretty stubborn most of the time, and I wasn’t sure if it was a trick.
‘STOP! STOP!’ The voice screamed again, and strangely all of our weapons fell silent at the desperate plea. We were troopers, trained to kill the enemies of the Union, but we didn’t kill those who didn’t want to fight.
I allowed myself a second or two to calm down, the orgy of killing was over for now, ‘Stand where we can see you!’
Four rebels stood, their hands held up into the air.
One of them shouted something in Dutch, and I received the translation shortly afterward, ‘We do not want to fight anymore! We surrender!’
‘Don’t move!’ I ordered, and the section swept forward toward them.
We found another three rebels on the ground, two of whom were dead, and the other one was shot through the leg. We searched them, stripping them of their weapons and equipment whilst I had Okonkwo treat the casualty.
The platoon commander approached and addressed the rebel prisoners, ‘How many more of you are there?’
‘There are many of us,’ one of them replied simply.
‘How many?’
The rebel shrugged, ‘Fifty in this building, I think.’
‘Where is your leader - Evans?’
The terrorists exchanged a glance, ‘He isn’t our leader,’ despite the polite translation there was no hiding their vehemence, ‘He is a traitor.’
Mr Moore harrumphed, ‘We worked that one out for ourselves.’
I ignored the sudden rush of wind as a dropship swooped away from the floor above, taking casualties away to Eindhoven. Johnno was already busy extracting our wounded. More dropships were approaching, carrying three platoon toward the floor below us so that they could continue the battle.
‘Why is Evans a traitor?’ I asked the terrorists, ‘And why is he up here?’
‘I’ll ask the questions here, Lance Corporal Moralee,’ the platoon commander snapped.
The rebels looked between us as Johnno’s work party arrived to cuff their hands and take them away to be loaded onto the next dropship.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ one of the them said with a shrug, ‘He will die soon anyway.’
‘That’s enough,’ Mr Moore turned to the work party, ‘Get these scum extracted to Eindhoven, Corporal Johnston, I want them out of the way before we get called to assault again.’
‘Roger,’ one of the work party replied, and they grabbed the rebels by their cuffs and marched them toward the stairwell, where Johnno had Jimmy’s section busy smashing away one of the windows so that another dropship could gain access to the building with its ramp.
Suddenly frightened for Ev, I chased after the prisoners, forgetting myself, ‘Where is Evans? Why did you say he’ll die soon?’
‘Moralee!’ Mr Moore shouted, but I ignored him. Another sudden blast of cold air announced the arrival of the next dropship, its massive hull blocking out the sun. It turned around to allow its rear ramp to gently lower to the floor through the freshly smashed out window.
‘Why do you care?’ The rebel asked me as he was led toward the ramp, ‘He is a deserter.’
‘He was my friend once,’ I admitted quietly, and the trooper escorting the rebel looked at me in surprise.
The rebel laughed harshly, ‘Then he is our enemy. He will not die yet. He will live long enough to see his dreams shattered before he dies.’
I couldn’t understand what the rebel meant. Either my translator wasn’t making proper sense out of the words he was using, or he was talking in riddles.
I was about to continue my interrogation when Mr Moore shouted from across the office at me, ‘Moralee! Snap out of your funk, we haven’t the time to fraternise with a bunch of prisoners! Consolidate your section so that they’re ready to assault again!’
I nodded reluctantly and allowed the prisoner to be marched away to his waiting dropship. He probably wasn’t going to tell me anything anyway, I figured. He certainly wasn’t going to tell me where they were taking Ev.
So Westy had been right, I thought as I watched the work party load our prisoners onto the waiting dropship, Ev was no rebel.
No. But he used to be a rebel, I reminded myself, just not anymore. He was far too wrapped up in all of this to be entirely innocent. So why had the rebels turned on him so angrily? Had they seen him helping us during our ambush, or had he committed some other crime against their cause? Why had they brought him up to the tip of the Citadel, and why we’re they even bothering to attempt to get him out?
I thought back to what the rebel had said to me, ‘He will live long enough to see his dreams shattered before he dies.’ The rebels hated him, clearly, but they hated something else about him. They hated something that Ev had stood for before. But the real question was what did the rebel mean by Ev’s ‘dreams’?
I shook my head to clear my mind. I knew that if there was any hope for Ev, it would be through us continuing our sweep downward, flushing the rebels into the arms of the conscripts who waited for them at the foot of the Citadel. Ev would be captured, but at least he would have the chance to explain himself. If he was truly innocent, then he would have a chance of survival, even if that was to be in a Union prison for desertion. It seemed that his only alternative was death at the hands of the rebels.
‘Moralee!’ The platoon commander was getting angry.
I stole one final glance to the dropship as it fell away with the prisoners, and I knew what I had to do. I had to find Ev.
12
Betrayal
The company stormed through the building rapidly, finding no sign of the rebels as it cleared floor-by-floor, room-by-room. Under the direction of the OC the three platoons of the company struck again and again, their dropships peppering the building with their vulcan cannon before disgorging their cargo of troopers. We weren’t taking any chances.
It quickly became apparent that the rebels had fled toward the lower sections of the building in their bid for freedom, and we picked up the pace of our assault as we became increasingly confident that there was no longer anyone around for us to fight. We were thorough though despite our speed, careful not to allow a lone rebel the ability to sneak behind us.
Every time I entered a room I half expected to find Ev’s body riddled with holes, but I never did.
I tried not to think about the fate of my old friend, but I couldn’t shake him from my mind. I couldn’t help but remember the rebel prisoner’s words. What the hell did he mean? The thought that my old friend was not on the side of NELA and that he might need my help filled me with resolve; I had to find him.
As we made our third entry into the building I noticed that the level was much wider, and as we cleared through I noticed a strange, glass pyramid in the centre of a large office.
‘What’s that?’ I pointed, and the troopers in my section followed my outstretched arm. Light emanated from the base of the pyramid, and I suddenly realised that it was in fact a window into a space below.
‘The Citadel’s hollow,’ Konny pointed out.
I walked over to the pyramid and leant against the glass, trying to ignore the extreme sense of vertigo as I saw that I was staring down into a huge chamber that grew wider and wider for hundreds of floors, until it finally reached some kind of garden or park at the base of the tower. Halfway down a walkway passed across the chamber, bridging the gap between two sides of the building.
My visor flickered with several orange crosshairs, and with a start I realised that there was movement in one of the floors just above the walkway.
‘Sir!’ I called.
‘What?’ The platoon commander was nearby, directing the other two sections in their clearance of the remainder of the floor.
‘There’s something I need you to take a look at!’
Mr Moore joined me by the pyramid. He leant over onto the glass so that, like me, he was suspended over the chasm below.
‘Can you see them?’ I asked as the orange crosshairs continued to appear and disappear far below us.
‘Yeah, I see them! Good spot, Moralee!’
I would have swelled with pride at the compliment, if I hadn’t already given the boss up for a dour, arrogant pain in the arse.
Mr Moore glanced back toward the work party who were covering the stairs, ‘I need a launcher!’
‘Roger!’ One of Johnno’s men responded instantly, and seconds later the trooper arrived with his smart launcher balanced on his shoulder ready to fire.
I moved away from the glass as the platoon commander briefed the trooper and held my rifle so that the camera could look down to where I had seen the orange crosshairs.
Figures were now crossing the walkway, most of them running, but two were struggling with some kind of load. I zoomed in to get a better view of what they were carrying, and there was no mistaking it. It was an unconscious man: It was Ev!!
‘Shit the bed!’ I exclaimed.
‘Them lot will be shitting the bed in a minute,’ Mr Moore joked darkly as the trooper readied his launcher. He pointed to me, ‘When I tell you to, you smash out the glass so the launcher can fire.’
‘We can’t!’
He frowned in puzzlement, ‘Why not?’
‘That Evans bloke is down there!’
‘Well, so what? He’s the enemy leader for God’s sake!’
‘He’s not their leader,’ I corrected, ‘They’re planning to kill him!’
‘I don’t care! Step aside, Moralee, I’ll break the glass!’
I don’t think we were far from throwing punches when Johnno intervened, having heard the commotion. He pushed the launcher away from the window.
‘Boss, what the hell are you doing?’
The platoon commander quickly explained his plan, but as soon as he mention
ed the words ‘smart missile’ Johnno stopped him.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ He threw his arms up into the air, ‘This building is over two hundred floors high! You’ll take the whole thing down with us in it!’
Mr Moore calmed down as he saw that Johnno was talking sense, the Citadel was a massive building and there was no telling how much damage the lower sections could take before it fell. I breathed a small sigh of relief. Ev was saved from our smart missile, though he was still in the hands of the rebels.
‘Damn it,’ Mr Moore cursed as the figures disappeared into the other side of the building. He struck the glass with a gloved hand, ‘There’s no way we can catch up with them!’
He had caught the scent of blood and was desperate for the kill, but he knew that his quarry was escaping and there was little he could do about it.
‘We could leave the company to continue their clearance,’ I suggested, ‘Then punch down in the dropships to close the gap?’
The platoon commander looked pained as he considered my suggestion. I knew that he wanted to do it.
‘I don’t know,’ he said almost sadly, ‘The OC wouldn’t go for it. He wants thoroughness.’
I tried a different approach, trying to prize open the crack in his armour, ‘Our orders were to clear the building. But if we take our time up here the enemy will set up defences lower down, or they might even attack the conscripts on the ground. There are fifty of them. That’s almost half a company heading straight for Major Ruckheim!’
‘Yes, I’m aware how large a company is, thank you,’ he looked to Johnno, ‘What do you think?’
Johnno paused thoughtfully, ‘Andy has a point, this building is massive. Normally you’d need a whole battalion to clear it. It makes more sense to maintain mobility and strike again lower down, keep the enemy on his toes. Explain it like that and I’m sure the OC will go for it.’
Mr Moore looked at each of us in turn, as if considering our argument. He was an aggressive platoon commander, more so than any other I had met. He already wanted to go on the offensive, all we had to do was give him a nudge.
LANCEJACK (The Union Series) Page 16