It was a Chinese transit tunnel, a legacy of the war. Designed to transport troops, vehicles and equipment at high speed without being detected, and destroyed by ships in orbit, it could run for tens or even hundreds of kilometres, connecting the city and its factories with numerous Chinese warrens, some of which we probably hadn’t even discovered.
‘Where the hell are we?’ Okonkwo whispered in awe as he stood up beside me, trying to take in the sheer size of the tunnel, ‘Did the rebels build this?’
‘No, the Chinese did,’ I corrected him, then pointed to where Jackson was emerging from the far less impressive access tunnel, ‘The rebels built that.’
‘So they really were using the tunnels to get in and out, then?’
‘We always knew that,’ I said, ‘The real question is… what’s on the other end of it?’
I sent the two of them twenty metres up the exit tunnel to give the platoon some cover, and then sent Konny and his own fire team in the opposite direction.
The boss was next to emerge, wriggling himself forward until he was clear to stand. He brushed dust away from himself irritably. He’ll have to get used to it, I thought to myself, for if we ended up fighting underground we would end up caked in dust.
‘I know tunnels can get squashed, but that was something else,’ he muttered. He studied our surroundings, nodding as he did so, ‘Now this is more like it. Now it’s all starting to make a bit more sense. You could shift a lot of kit along here.’
He looked along the length of the tunnel and into the gloom.
‘Spooky, right?’
I glanced at the platoon commander, not sure if he had been talking to me, ‘Yeah.’
Westy stood up beside us, giving me a friendly pat on the back. The remainder of the platoon followed behind, their commanders quickly spreading them out along the tunnel.
‘Alright, mate?’ I whispered to Westy. He looked a little strange without any equipment, but we didn’t have the time to find him anything. Instead he had been armed with a rifle taken from one of the dead rebels in the warehouse.
He smiled grimly, ‘I’ve had better days.’
‘Hey,’ the boss hissed, ‘Less chat, you two. You make me uneasy. How do I know you’re not planning to blow us up or something?’
I realised that he was trying to be funny.
‘Well, Boss,’ Johnno joked, ‘That would be your fault, wouldn’t it? You trusted them!’
‘Well, more fool me,’ Mr Moore grumbled. He looked down at his datapad, working out which way was likely to take us toward the mountains. Without a view of the sky our maps couldn’t give us a fully accurate location but they could predict where we were and where we were going by sensing our movements, vital when we were underground and none of our equipment could transmit.
He extended an arm and pointed into the darkness, ‘That way.’
‘How far?’
He looked back down at his datapad, ‘Thirty kilometres.’
‘That’s quite a walk.’
‘Four to five hours hard march,’ the boss confirmed, still looking out into the tunnel, ‘Nothing we’re not trained for.’
‘Which means that Ruckheim has probably already reached the other end,’ Johnno concluded.
‘Probably. Are there any wires, sensors?’
The EW operator, who had been attached from the OCs command group, looked up from his own datapad. He wasn’t as well equipped as an engineer might be, but his datapad could passively scan for enemy equipment or transmissions, if they were stupid enough to leave them on. ‘I can’t detect anything. There’s no line of communication along this tunnel, not from here, anyway.’
That’s good, I thought. That meant that there was no early warning system to tell them that we had entered their tunnel, and no means for the rebels in the warehouse to pass on news of our assault other than via the net, which we had shut down. The rebels were relying upon secrecy to protect their access route to the city, and they had left it wide open. Their string of successes had blinded them with confidence.
‘Will you pick up something before we set it off?’ The boss asked the operator.
‘Don’t count on it.’
‘Well, we’ll just have to take that chance,’ he decided, ‘If we don’t follow this tunnel, then we may never know where the rebels went. Get the platoon ready to go, gents. Order of march will be Three section, Two and then One.’
The platoon quickly organised itself into patrol formation, with mine taking up the front. I ensured that my section were spread out in staggered file, making full use of the tunnel width, with me forward left and Okonkwo forward right.
The boss had sent Westy up to the front of the platoon with me, to act as a guide.
‘I don’t know exactly what he thinks I’m going to do up here,’ the Welshman said angrily as he crouched close beside me, ‘I can’t remember anything. I’m not gonna be much use with this, anyway!’
He held up the Chinese rifle that he had been given. His visor targeting system wouldn’t be able to communicate with the weapon through his combats, and so he would have to use it traditionally by looking through the sight, costing him valuable seconds. Perhaps that had been the OCs intention, for I wasn’t sure that he trusted us entirely.
I smiled mischievously, ‘Don’t worry, mate. I’ll protect you.’
He snorted, ‘What from? You can’t even protect yourself! Are you sure you even know how to use that thing?’ He patted the barrel of my rifle.
‘I’ll have you know I’m a pretty good shot,’ I replied, feigning hurt.
‘I’ll believe that when I see it, lad!’
We waited for the platoon commander’s order to advance, staring into the darkness ahead of us and contemplating our fate.
‘Never thought I’d ever end up down here again,’ Westy said.
‘Me neither,’ I agreed.
‘I hope Ev is okay.’
‘Me too.’
Another few seconds passed before Westy spoke again.
‘Thanks.’
‘For what?’
Westy shrugged, ‘For being around.’
I was about to reply when I heard footsteps approaching. I glanced behind me, it was Mr Moore. He crouched down beside me and whispered in my ear, ‘Good to go?’
‘Yeah, Boss,’ I replied quietly.
‘When you move off, keep the pace up. We can’t mince or we’ll be down here for days. But if you see something you don’t like, go firm.’
‘Understood.’
‘Alright, then, Moralee. Time to redeem yourself,’ he patted my daysack as he stood up and walked away to take up his position behind my section.
Westy watched him go, ‘I think he likes you, mate,’ he whispered with a grin.
I grumbled, ‘He has a funny way of showing it.’
‘That’s just the way he is. Shall we go, then?’
I nodded, ‘Yeah. Let’s do this.’
I looked across the tunnel to Okonkwo, who was watching me expectantly. With a wave of my hand we fired ourselves up and advanced.
#
The march was hard going. I stretched out my legs as far as I could without breaking into a jog, and the muscles in my shins began to burn from the exertion.
Forced marching, or ‘tabbing’ as it was known, enabled a trooper to get to battle within the minimum time without being completely exhausted on the other end. Even though we were taken into combat by dropship we were still expected to be able to do it, for no trooper or soldier was above a bit of mindless tabbing. A trooper was expected to be able to march between six and seven kilometres per hour with full kit, and distances of thirty kilometres or more were often covered during our gruelling training on Uralis.
Despite our training and the cool conditioned air that our respirators blasted against our faces, I could still hear the heavy breathing of the troopers behind me, and beads of sweat formed upon my brow.
I sucked on my drinking straw as I marched, my eyes darting across the
tunnel walls in search of something that looked out of place. My visor computer was likely to spot anything before I did, but I knew from experience never to take that chance.
Occasionally we stopped, allowing a minute for troopers to catch their breath and suck rations through their feeding straws. Nobody liked eating rations, but they contained the necessary nutrients that we needed to keep going for the whole thirty kilometres. Plus the men were tired, since they had slept for only a few hours in two days.
We had been marching for well over an hour before we saw something further up the tunnel. My visor identified it before I did with an orange crosshair, and I ordered everyone to stop with a hand signal. I squinted at the distant object, trying to work out what it was.
My visor had identified something of a different temperature to the tunnel walls, a good five hundred metres away from us. Whatever it was, though, it wasn’t moving.
‘What is that?’ The boss asked, having moved forward to see why we had stopped.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied, studying the object using the zoom on my scope. Advanced though our night vision was, we were operating in the pitch black in a warm underground environment. Coupled together, those two factors made it difficult to make out any detail on the object.
I turned to Westy, ‘What do you think?’
Westy leant forward as though the extra few centimetres might give him a better view, ‘No idea. We’re too far away.’
‘Boss?’
‘Go forward another few hundred metres,’ Mr Moore decided, ‘Take it easy.’
We patrolled forward for another couple of minutes, before I raised my rifle to check it again.
‘It’s a body,’ I said as the boss approached me again.
‘Are you sure?’
I frowned, ‘Of course I’m sure. I know what a body looks like!’
‘Fair enough. Let’s take a look.’
I slowed my advance for the last hundred metres, keeping my rifle trained upon the body as I approached. It was still giving off a fair amount of heat, according to my thermal imaging, and so if it was dead, it hadn’t been for long.
As I came within he last ten metres I could see that the body was lying face down on the ground. It was dressed in civilian clothing, with a small rucksack on its back. It looked as though the body had been shot in the back several times. The rucksack had been opened, and its contents scattered across the ground.
Pointing my rifle directly at the figure, I squatted beside it and inspected the discarded items. There were several relatively normal items of equipment, including a warm coat and a waterproof jacket liner, as well as a spare respirator canister and some cooking equipment.
‘Seems that this guy was the outdoor type,’ Westy pointed out, ‘I didn’t think the New Earthers were much into that.’
I found something else on the ground, something that looked like a miniature tablet. I reached down and picked it up, turning it over curiously in my hands. It looked like somebody had cracked the glass, maybe by stepping on it.
‘What’s that?’
‘A tablet, I think…’
Suddenly the tablet sprang to life, illuminating the tunnel. To our visors it was as though somebody had turned on a spotlight.
‘Jesus!’ I exclaimed. It was a picture, but I only caught a quick glimpse of it as I shook it, frantically trying to turn the civilian tablet off. Unlike our own datapads they weren’t designed to be tactical.
‘Turn it off!’ Westy hissed angrily.
‘How?’
‘I don’t know! Smash it!’
I chucked the tablet on the floor and stamped on it, extinguishing the light at last.
The boss arrived behind us, barely containing his anger, ‘What the hell are you doing? Are you two out of your fucking minds?’
‘It was an accident,’ I replied.
‘Be bloody, careful, how do you know…’
Westy held out a hand to stop us both, ‘It’s moving.’
We looked down. Sure enough, the body had moved its leg slightly. I gripped it by the shoulder and turned it over…
It was a woman. Although it was difficult to make out all of her features in the dark, I could see that she was relatively young and pretty. Her eyes fluttered, and I could tell that she was slowly slipping away.
Westy quickly tore open her shirt, exposing three exit wounds. She had been shot in the back with a high powered rifle at close range, and the darts had punched straight through her.
‘You got any quick-clot?’ He asked me urgently, ‘I don’t have any kit!’
‘I’ve got some,’ Mr Moore replied instantly, digging his hand into his medical pouch. He gave it to Westy, who quickly set about stuffing it into the woman’s wounds.
We all knew deep inside that it was a token effort. The woman must have been there for several hours, judging by her condition. If she had been equipped like us then she would have been diagnosed and treated automatically by the very clothes on her back, but instead she had simply bled out onto the cold tunnel floor, God knows how she was even still alive. We could never get her back to the warehouse in time for her to see a medic, even if we did simply decide to ditch our patrol. We lived in a harsh world, and civilian casualties were considered a necessary evil.
The woman whimpered, and I realised that she couldn’t see us in the dark. She must have been carrying a torch before she was shot. I imagined how terrifying it must be for her to have somebody stuffing foam into her wounds without her being able to see them. She must have thought that we were torturing her.
‘Shhh,’ I soothed quietly, ‘It’s okay. We’re Union troops. We’re trying to help you. I know it’s dark, but please don’t be afraid. We won’t hurt you.’
‘My husband…’ the woman said weakly – but her voice was deafeningly loud in the silent tunnel, and I flinched.
‘Yes?’ I asked, trying to get more information out of her. I already knew who she was talking about.
‘My husband…’ she repeated. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to speak to me or if she was delirious.
‘She’s lost a lot of blood,’ Westy whispered to the boss. He wasn’t being quiet for our own safety, he was doing it because he didn’t want her to hear, ‘She has a very weak pulse. I don’t think I can do much more. I could get an IV in, but…’
‘No,’ Mr Moore replied, ‘We would just be prolonging the agony. We can’t bring her with us, and we can’t just go back. There’s a lot riding on this patrol.’
Westy nodded sadly, ‘Okay. I’d like to give her some pain relief, then.’
We all knew what he meant. We would give her an overdose, so that she could die comfortably. We couldn’t just leave her there like this in the darkness.
‘My husband…’ the woman breathed as Westy pressed one of the boss’s auto-injectors against her thigh and activated it.
‘He’ll be okay,’ I told her quietly as I watched her eyes flutter once more. I passed one of my own auto-injectors to Westy so that he could finish the job.
I leant close to the woman’s ear as Westy injected her a second time, and I spoke as quietly as I possibly could, hoping that she might hear me.
‘I know your husband,’ I said, ‘I’m his friend, and I am going to help him.’
I noticed the woman’s hand creeping across the ground toward me, and I wrapped her fingers in mine. ‘I swear that I will help him.’
The woman’s final few breaths produced an eerie, almost rattling sound. I knew that her dying body was no longer in control of the secretions in her lungs, and that they were quickly filling with fluid. Finally she breathed out a loud sigh, as though her soul was escaping out of her mouth, and she died.
We stared down at the dead woman for a few seconds, as though we were all paying our last respects.
‘Who the hell do you think she was?’ Mr Moore asked finally.
‘No idea,’ I lied.
Westy shook his head sorrowfully, ‘Poor woman. What a way to die.’
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I watched the boss as sorrow quickly turned to anger, ‘Who shoots a civvy woman in the back, anyway? This lot are a bunch of bloody cowards.’
‘Well,’ I said, changing the subject, ‘There is something else that strikes me about that woman.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘She’s well prepared for the great outdoors,’ I gestured to the kit that had been pulled out of her daysack and strewn across the floor.
Mr Moore crouched down, picking up the water proof jacket to study it.
‘So you think the rebel base is on the surface?’ He asked. He tossed the jacket aside.
Westy sniffed, ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out.’
I spared one last glance at the woman before we set off once again. I didn’t even know her name, but I knew who she was. I had seen the image displayed upon her tablet before I managed to smash out the light, it was a smiling picture of her with her husband. I had no intention of ever telling Westy about the picture, or what I had said to her before she died. I couldn’t bear to tell him that he had just killed Ev’s wife.
#
Our march lasted five hours before the tunnel opened into another cavern, but this one was massive. Huge arches of concrete and metal girders supported the rocky ceiling high above us, like the roof of some arcane cathedral built deep underground. As I slowly crept out of the tunnel, I couldn’t help but be awed by the immensity of the structure.
The maglev rails cut between two raised platforms that ran the length of the cavern until they came to another tunnel. I used the platform to my right as cover, with my rifle aimed across to the opposite side. Okonkwo mirrored me on the other side of the maglev rails, covering above my head.
Our fingers hovered over our rifle power buttons, ready to activate the powerful magnets the second we saw something move. I hated having my rifle powered down, it added that critical fraction of a second that could make the difference between life and death, but we had no choice. The magnetic fields could be picked up easily underground, potentially giving our position away to any rebels nearby.
We were in an underground station, much like those that we had on Earth but on a much grander scale. Huge cranes hung from the roof of the station, their hooks and cables hanging down toward us.
LANCEJACK (The Union Series) Page 23