Finally, after several precious seconds, he nodded, ‘You’re right. I’ll talk to the OC. Give me a second.’
We nodded as one, ‘Okay, Sir.’
As if in afterthought the platoon commander fixed me with a stern look, ‘Moralee, I can’t make sense of you. You’re either a tactical genius or a raging madman!’
As he spoke to his own commander using the company net, I thought about what Mr Moore had said. He hadn’t been the first man in the platoon to say that I was crazy. Maybe I was. After all, I had just managed to persuade him to assault deeper into the building with the sole intention of chasing after my old platoon sergeant, who was an ex- member of a rebellion hell bent on bringing a city to its knees.
It took less than a minute before Mr Moore gave Johnno the thumbs up. The OC had agreed to our plan and we were allowed to give chase.
Johnno flicked to the battle group net, ‘Hades-four-zero, this is One-zero-Bravo. Request pick up on my call!’
He gave the platoon commander the thumbs up. ‘Hades’, our small squadron of four dropships, had received the message. Somewhere a few kilometres away our dropships would be arcing around toward us at incredible speeds, waiting for our call to be picked up.
‘We won’t have any other platoons in support,’ Mr Moore told Johnno, ‘So we will assault on the same level in echelon. Therefore I will take the first two sections in, you will hold back with the third in reserve.’
Johnno nodded, ‘Roger that, boss! I’m gonna have the dropships meet you over there,’ he pointed toward the far wall of the office, which was made entirely of glass.
‘Good. Moralee, get your men over there and prepare the pick-up point!’
I waved over my section and lead them across the office toward the window, and as I did so I heard Johnno giving the final co-ordinates for the dropships to locate us. Corporal Myers and his own section converged with us and Mr Moore quickly explained to us his plan. With the remainder of the company continuing to clear through the Citadel we would thrust downward using the dropships. We would then conduct another entry onto the floor with the bridge, which was where we had last seen the enemy, in an attempt to harass him on his escape.
We used the butts on our mammoth gunners to knock out several panels of glass, to enable access to the approaching dropships. Once again the building whistled as the wind rushed through, causing one or two troopers to stagger precariously close to the edge.
Alpha Centauri Alpha glowed orange as it set behind a distant mountain range, casting long shadows that slowly crept across the endless farmland that surrounded Nieuwe Poort. I looked over the edge of the Citadel toward the darkening cityscape far below. The tallest buildings were insignificant against the Citadel, barely half its height, and it was almost impossible to tell what was going on inside the domes without using the zoom on my rifle. In between the towers I spotted the dropships, weaving left and right in an attempt to make themselves a near impossible target for the rebels to engage.
‘Here they come!’
With a blast of air that almost threw me from my feet the first dropship arrived, quickly lowering its ramp.
‘Corporal Myers,’ Mr Moore shouted over the wind, ‘You first!’
The section commander nodded and ushered his men onto the dropship, spurring them on into battle with a slap against their daysacks. No sooner had he seated himself inside the tiny crew compartment than the dropship fell away from the window and another appeared.
Mr Moore tapped my shoulder, ‘You’re on the third one, Corporal Moralee!’
‘Roger!’
He was gone, taking the signaller with him. In order to keep Johnno and the other section behind in reserve he had requested a fifth dropship, since they only carried eight fully-kitted troopers. There wouldn’t be room for the two of them with us. Anymore than eight resulted in the additional trooper being thrown around the compartment like a brick. Not good.
‘Give ‘em one for me, mate!’ I heard Johnno shout over the platoon net as our dropship arrived, and I ordered the section to load.
Konny accepted his new place at the back of the compartment without a word and we boarded the dropship as quickly as we could behind him, this time with my fire team closest the exit. Each trooper hurriedly strapped himself into his seat as soon as he was in.
I paused by the ramp for the last man to step aboard, so that I could take my new place at the front of the compartment. Now that I had become the section commander I was one of the first out.
Suddenly I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye. It was moving impossibly, changing direction so fast that if it had been manned it would have turned its crew to mush. I knew only too well what it was; it was a saucer. But I had been told that our own saucers were keeping clear of the city unless called for? This one was coming straight for us!
‘Contact - fast air!’
Johnno hollered from behind me, ‘Andy, look out!’
I dived into the dropship, throwing myself across the legs of its surprised human cargo with only seconds to spare. We fell.
The dropship hurtled to the ground so suddenly that it threw me toward the roof of the compartment, and hands grasped at my armour to prevent me from being sucked out of the door by the sudden rush of air.
Okonkwo grunted as he tried to pull me down toward my seat, but with the extreme G-forces it was as though gravity had been reversed and I cried out as I felt his grip slipping. The endless windows of the Citadel became a blur as we accelerated away from the saucer, and the dropship began to vibrate as its vulcan cannon opened fire.
The dropship ramp closed with a thump just before it lurched to the side violently, and I was thrown to one side of the compartment like a rag doll, knocking my head against the wall. I cried out again, more in shock than in pain. I cradled my rifle close to my body, aware that it could easily kill one of my comrades as I was tossed about.
‘Get him in his seat!’ Konny shouted urgently to those around me.
He knew as well as I did the result of a trooper not being strapped in. With or without his armour, it meant broken bones and possibly even death. The section struggled to move me toward my seat in a tangle of arms that grabbed at every loose piece of fabric and every piece of equipment I carried, and finally I heard the wonderful sound of my buckle clipping and the reassuring tightness of the straps about me.
Our bodyweight almost instantly multiplied as the dropship ended its decent and began to climb rapidly, banking to the left and right as it did so, as if it were weaving between an unseen set of obstacles. It continued to vibrate, its vulcan cannon and assortment of missiles firing an endless barrage at the much more manoeuvrable robotic saucer.
Geany gripped the straps around his shoulders as the dropship rolled onto its side, ‘Looks like we found the other saucer, then!’
Okonkwo tapped me on the shoulder and laughed, ‘Enjoy your ride, Andy?’
‘No,’ I replied gruffly, hiding my relief to be strapped into my seat securely, despite the nauseating ride. I quickly tapped my datapad to switch myself onto the dropship net, the first time I had been in a position to listen to the crew in action.
‘…Keep tracking him!’ The disembodied voice of the dropship commander ordered.
‘Yeah, I’ve still got him, he’s moving away to the west!’
‘Keep engaging!’
‘Still engaging! He’s coming back!’
‘I see him! Ky, keep him off us!’
The dropship suddenly pulled a sharp turn to the left, banking so hard that I thought I might pass out.
‘Section Commander?’
The dropship commander was talking to me, I realised, ‘Yeah?’
‘Sorry about that, mate, you all okay?’
‘Not really,’ I replied angrily, even though the crew had probably saved our lives, ‘I wasn’t buckled in!’
My headset echoed with the unsympathetic laughter of the three dropship crew as they continued to evade the saucer.
‘Where the hell did that come from?’ I asked.
‘No idea, mate,’ the commander replied, ‘But that thing isn’t being guided by an outside signal. The rebels must have brought it down somewhere and reprogrammed it. That’s some pretty clever stuff!’
No shit, I thought to myself. If they could reprogram something as advanced as a saucer to attack Union troops without any external communication, then there was very little that they couldn’t do. I thanked the heavens that they couldn’t do the same to our warships. Then we really would be in trouble.
‘All Hades call signs listen in,’ another voice ordered, ‘Maintain fire onto enemy saucer, reserve ships cover the drop off point. Drop off point is marked. All call signs, acknowledge.’
There was a series of sounds and beeps as the other dropships acknowledged the plan.
‘Time of drop off is in thirty seconds from my mark…,’ a pause… ‘Mark.’
The crew began to exchange a confusing string of numbers and words that made little sense to me as the dropship hurtled toward its designated drop off point. Undeterred by the enemy saucer, we were still going into the assault, because we were as safe in the Citadel as we were in the air.
I pulled myself together ready for our exit, which would be a perfectly timed simultaneous drop off. Both my section and Jimmy’s would be unloaded together into the Citadel, with the platoon commander and his signaller coming only seconds later.
Mr Moore couldn’t be the first man on the ground for obvious reasons. Leading from the front was important, but it didn’t help if he died straight away, not matter how much he irritated me.
I willed us to hurry up, so that I could get back into an environment that I had control of and also because I wanted to get to Ev before it was too late. If I had my way I would have suggested coming out below the rebels and cutting them off before they escaped the building, but I knew that Mr Moore would never go for a situation where fifty desperate rebels divided us from the rest of the platoon. After all, we were tasked to clear the building, which meant to empty it of enemy, not kill everyone.
‘Take out the glass,’ the dropship commander ordered, ‘That’s it! Ky, drop your ramp and bring us in! No enemy in sight!’
‘Stand by!’ I shouted, and I aimed my rifle toward the rear ramp, along with Okonkwo. My fire team had now changed from Delta to Charlie. If there were any enemy waiting for us, it would be us who faced them first.
The ramp fell away and once again we dismounted into the Citadel, leaping the last few steps out of dropship in fear of it being struck out of the sky whilst it hovered. I ignored the fearsome roar of the vulcan cannon engaging the saucer as I took in my new surroundings, advancing aggressively into the building.
The sky was darkening, and my visor switched automatically to image intensifier, searching the shadows for potential targets for me to engage.
We were in another office, except this time the hollow section of the Citadel was at least a hundred metres across. The walkway that I had seen the enemy use was right in front of us, spanning the gap between the two sides of the building, and I started toward it.
‘Not that way, mate,’ Jimmy told me, his own section starting to sweep clockwise around the outside of the building, ‘Never take the easy route!’
I swore at the delay. Jimmy was right, if the enemy had seen us arrive they would no doubt chose to cover the walkway in the hope that an idiot like me would run straight across it.
I had my section mirror his, sweeping through the offices counter-clockwise. The task was made simple because much of the building was glass, and I could see him and his section even as we reached opposite sides of the building.
Happy that we had chosen a good course of action during his initial absence, Mr Moore had chosen to follow me and my section, presumably because he trusted Jimmy more than he did me. That was fair enough, he was a screw and I was only a lancejack doing a screw’s job, after all.
Outside, a cluster of missiles streaked past the Citadel, bathing the offices in red light as they narrowly avoided the glass panels. The building shook.
Thank God that the rebels couldn’t hack into any more of our equipment, I thought. What would happen if they managed to hack into the rest of our saucers…or battleship Invincible? I dismissed the thought, it was impossible to hack into our ships.
‘Don’t worry about what’s going on out there,’ the platoon commander ordered the two sections as we continued to move around the building toward the stairwell.
His signaller chattered continuously, keeping Johnno and the rest of the company informed of our progress.
I held up a hand, and the section stopped. Something was moving in the shadows of the floor below us, indicated orange by my visor.
I tried to peer through the struts that supported the walkway to get a better view of whatever it was, and as they saw me do so the section turned as one to face the new threat.
The orange cursor remained, but I couldn’t confirm that it was enemy and neither could the computer contained within my visor. I crept closer toward the edge of the office, stopping a few metres short of the glass wall that separated us from the immense hollow space that ran for countless floors both above and below us.
There was somebody there, alright, of that I was near enough positive. The rebels were hiding, waiting for us to fall into some kind of trap perhaps, on the walkway itself. I couldn’t be sure if we had been seen moving around the outside of the building, since the enemy probably didn’t have the same targeting system as us, but it was safe to assume that they had seen us dismount from our dropships. I wondered what they were doing.
‘Cheeky bastards,’ Mr Moore hissed as he came to crouch beside me.
‘What do you think they’re doing?’ I whispered, so quietly he had to lean close to hear me, even with his headset amplifying the sound.
‘Probably waiting for us to run over that,’ he replied gruffly, nodding toward the bridge.
‘Maybe,’ I said thoughtfully. Fortunately for me and my section, Jimmy had been there when we dismounted to pass on his wisdom: ‘Never take the easy route.’ Still, that was a pretty obvious ambush, not very well hidden.
I paused, allowing for Jimmy’s words of wisdom to echo about my head. The orange crosshair waited, in a perfect spot to ambush the walkway. We could easily fire upon it from where we were and launch Jimmy and his men into the assault, using grenades to get down the stairwell. His section had seen us go firm and had crouched directly above the crosshair ready to be sent around for the kill.
But something wasn’t right; it was too easy.
‘It’s a come-on,’ I whispered finally.
The platoon commander glanced at me, ‘A what?’
‘A come-on,’ I repeated, ‘A ruse by the enemy to get us to do what he wants us to do.’
The building rumbled as the rebel saucer shot past us, chased by streaks of tracer.
‘What are you on about, Corporal Moralee?’
‘How likely are we to run across that bridge?’ I asked. Very likely if it hadn’t been for Jimmy, I thought - but then Mr Moore hadn’t debussed from his dropship soon enough to know that - and I wasn’t about to tell him!
‘Not very likely,’ he agreed cautiously.
I continued, ‘We’re more likely to do what we’re doing now.’
‘And see that…’ he flicked his head toward the orange crosshair, and I nodded.
I watched him as he considered the enemies thought process. He didn’t have long, for whether the poorly laid ambush was only bait or not, the enemy would soon grow impatient.
‘He expects us to come down the stairs,’ he decided, ‘So we will come through the ceiling. Right here.’
I whispered over the section net for Konny to prepare a mouse-hole charge, and he quickly removed the small conical device from his daysack and placed it at his feet. With a wave of my arm and keeping to the shadows, we crept back the way we had come, taking cover ten metres away from t
he device. The mouse-hole was meant to direct all of its explosive force in one direction, but it still had a blast effect if you stood too close behind it.
I saw that Mr Moore had ordered Jimmy to place a mouse-hole as well, almost above the orange crosshair. Somebody was about to get a nasty headache.
The platoon commander patted my shoulder from behind me, ‘When you make entry, be mindful of the other section. Don’t shoot anything in the direction of Corporal Myers unless you have to. I’ll be right behind you.’
‘Roger.’
‘Do it.’
I looked at my section who were spread out across the office, silhouetted against the dark blue sky. They had heard the conversation between me and the platoon commander, and now they watched me in anticipation.
I gave Konny the nod, and almost instantly I heard the prominent beep in my headset that announced the activation of the charge and its imminent detonation.
There was a sudden blinding flash of light. We were hurled to the ground as the mouse-hole detonated, shattering every section of glass on the entire floor.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Mr Moore exclaimed as I picked myself up from the ground in a daze.
I knew that despite the mouse-hole directing all its force in one direction, it had a danger area all around it, but that had been a ridiculously powerful explosion. The building still echoed and shook from the blast, even as I managed to get back onto my feet.
‘What on earth was that?’ Okonkwo asked.
‘Go!’ Mr Moore pushed at my daysack and I snapped back to my senses, ‘GO!’
‘Okonkwo, GO!’ I repeated, and we charged toward the smouldering hole left by the charge. It was massive, easily large enough to lower an entire dropship through, let alone us.
Okonkwo skidded to a halt by the hole, ‘Whoa!’
I was only seconds behind him. I stopped at the hole and peered through, instantly seeing why Okonkwo hadn’t gone for it. The mouse-hole had somehow made a gaping hole through both our floor and the one below.
‘Go, then!’ Mr Moore shouted again.
‘I can’t, Boss, it’s taken out the floor below us as well!’
LANCEJACK (The Union Series) Page 17