I imagined the army of Loyalist fanatics charging over the river in their dropships. They might take heavy losses - dropships were vulnerable to dismounted infantry armed with smart missiles - but they outnumbered the FEA and had artillery on their side.
‘What fire support assets do I have?’ I asked.
‘Saucers and guns,’ Mr Barkley replied. ‘You’ve got a single battery of railguns set up about thirty kilometres to our rear, and at the moment they are working directly to us. That may change, however, since they may get re-tasked if a more important target comes up elsewhere. As for the saucers, they are on stand-by - so just ask when you want them and I will hand them to you.’
I nodded. ‘Understood. What about orbital assets?’
He took a deep breath, ‘there’s one ship, Warrior, which EJOC has agreed to task to us for the entire operation. I’ve got it stood by to fire smoke bombs to cover the relief along the river, but that’s about it. Don’t expect much more than that, EJOC won’t allow orbital artillery to be fired into Edo, no matter what it’s for. Unless you expect to die, don’t even ask.’
‘Fair enough.’
I looked around the tent, seeing that Yulia had removed her respirator and was having a quiet conversation with one of the Presidential Guard officers on the opposite end of the hologram. I watched her for a second, wondering what they were talking about.
‘I don’t trust these people,’ I said quietly.
‘I don’t trust them either,’ the platoon commander agreed. He tilted his head toward Yulia. ‘She’s your liaison officer, I take it?’
‘Yeah.’
He grinned. ‘Christ, I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley!’
‘No shit.’
Yulia wasn’t ugly, but the hard look on her face and the coldness in her dark brown eyes told a story. She was a nasty piece of work, of that I had no doubt. I made a mental note to keep a close eye on her, and ensure she was never able to move freely about my section without being watched.
Yulia nodded slowly as the other Guard officer gave her instructions, her eyes briefly flicking over to us.
‘Just remember you need her,’ the platoon commander reminded me. ‘She is your link to the FEA command.’
‘So are you – you are staying with the CO aren’t you?’
‘Yes, but I won’t be as good a link as her. She will know intuitively what her comrades are doing.’
I nodded, watching as Yulia ended her conversation and began to make her way around the hologram toward us. ‘Fair enough.’
Yulia stopped in front of us, regarding us both as if she were sizing us up for a fight. ‘You have been briefed on the situation?’
‘Near enough,’ I replied.
She turned to me. ‘We are trying to get a dropship to take you forward to the front line. You can wait outside until it is ready.’
She was effectively telling me to go away. I looked up, listening to the rain that was still hammering against the tent, then glanced briefly at Mr Barkley. He gave a slight shrug. Put up with it, Andy, you need her.
‘Fine,’ I said brusquely, ‘I’ll wait outside.’
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The Marsh
The section huddled around me outside the tent, ignoring the rain and listening intently while I explained to them the Loyalist situation, and what the FEA were up to, as well as the sergeant major in the north. It was important that everyone understood exactly what was going on around them, especially in our situation. The average drop trooper might get away with only a basic understanding of the battalion plan, so long as he knew his own part within it, but we couldn't afford such ignorance. Every recce trooper needed to know as much as possible about the wider battle and how he could influence it, especially when we were working around a unit we didn't fully understand, or trust.
'The battalion appear to be approximately five kilometres behind the front line,' I explained. 'Up until now they have been kept in reserve in order to regain their combat effectiveness. It seems they took far heavier losses than we had expected …'
'Yeah, we noticed,’ Wildgoose commented. ‘Half their soldiers are kids straight out of school. They look like they’re bricking it!’
I glanced up at the young FEA soldiers, packing their equipment away as they prepared themselves for action. Wildgoose was right, they were far from the steely-eyed veterans I had expected to see; they looked instead as though they had only just arrived. In truth they probably had, drafted in by Edo in its final act of desperation before the Loyalist horde spilled into their heartland. Some of them looked terrified.
'Fair one,’ I agreed. ‘We need to remember to give these kids a wide berth. They’ll be nervous and confused - not a good combination when you’re armed with darts and grenades.’
‘Shouldn’t you be over there with them, Myers?’ Puppy asked with a mischievous grin.
‘Nice one,’ Myers replied sarcastically. ‘Maybe you should cut over there, mate. They might be able to teach you some stuff …’
I held a hand up to silence them. ‘Alright, that’ll do. Anyway- there are several FEA battalions currently trying to hold the river to the north of us, though they can’t hold on for much longer. Their plan is to launch this battalion forward, conducting a forward passage of lines, smashing through the FEA front line and back into the offensive with the mind to throw the Loyalists off balance.’
The battalion had two objectives, delegated down to them by the Presidential Guard, who appeared to be in charge of the overall battle. Initially they had orders to push forward on foot, conducting a relief of one of the embattled battalions holding along the river. Once it had done so, another battalion was going to break through the Loyalist line, using dropships to cross the river at speed. With the far bank secured the army would then continue its drive northwards, pushing the Loyalists back toward Dakar. It all sounded simple when I said it, but we all knew that no plan survived contact with the enemy.
'So where do we fit in?' Puppy asked, once I finished explaining the plan.
'We will provide the big guns,' I replied. 'The Boss has lined up close-air support from the saucers, as well as railgun artillery. We might get help from orbit as well, but I wouldn’t count on it.'
'Why's that?'
'The Alliance will be watching, and if they get the wrong idea and think we're bombing the FEA they'll get excited. The main thing is providing them with regular support assets like the guns and the saucers. It’s something these guys haven’t had for some time, and the reason why the Loyalists have managed to push them back so quickly. So far, Loyalist artillery have been winning the war.’
'Sounds like you’ll be doing most of the work, then,’ Wildgoose said, sounding almost disappointed.
The corner of my mouth twitched - I wouldn’t have expected much else from a trained sniper. He itched to do his job, and it was his job to hunt and kill men. Of all the troopers under my command, I found Wildgoose to be one of the easiest to understand.
I held up a warning finger. ‘Don’t count on it, mate. This is all-out war, not a small-scale contact, and to make it worse neither side are likely to be following a field manual. Anticipate pure chaos. One minute you’ll be sat around doing nothing, then the next minute it’ll all kick off. Stay alert, and be prepared for anything.’
As I spoke, I noticed the gaze of the section turn to regard somebody approaching from behind, and the atmosphere suddenly turned icy. I looked over my shoulder to see that Yulia had returned from headquarters, dressed for battle, along with another random Guardsman. Through his rain-soaked visor the Guardsman looked me up and down, as if he was working out if he could take me on. He wasn’t as young as the boy-soldiers in the FEA, but he was still little more than a teenager. His eyes burned with the hatred of a young man ripped from his innocence by war.
‘Are you ready to go, Andy?’ Yulia asked. ‘The dropship is waiting.’
My eyes narrowed as I noticed the newcomer was still glarin
g at me. ‘Who’s he?’
Yulia looked at the Guardsman. ‘This is Makito. He will be my bodyguard.’
I shook my head. ‘There’s no need. I doubt he’ll be much use to us.’
Somebody sniggered at my blunt assessment of Makito’s ability. He could pull off a nasty facial expression, but it didn’t detract from the fact that he was little more than a teenager.
‘He’s not here for you, Andy. He is here to protect me from you.’
I shot her a wry smile. ‘Clearly if the guard could only spare you Makito here, then they don’t value you very highly. He wouldn’t last five minutes - against us or the Loyalists.’
Makito scowled at me as my words were translated by his headset.
‘These are times of war,’ she said angrily, ‘everybody must fight, even our young. Nobody is a non-combatant anymore.’
I remembered the Loyalist slaughter of the villagers of Aasha, and my face darkened. ‘Don’t I know it! The point is that I don’t want random people thrown into my section, especially teenagers. He’ll get in the way. There is no requirement for a “bodyguard”.’
‘Makito will come with me,’ Yulia insisted. ‘My people do not trust you. I do not trust you. If I had my way then you would be escorted by an entire platoon, not just two of us.’
We glared at each other for several seconds, until finally I gave in. ‘Fine. But he is your responsibility, not mine. Understood?’
‘Understood.’
I waved my hand irritably. ‘Go on, then. Lead the way.’
I heard the distant chatter of gunfire as Yulia led us away from the FEA headquarters toward the dropship that would take us into battle. A few years ago the sound of battle would have sent a chill of dread down my spine, but now I was virtually indifferent to it. The only important thing was to complete my mission, and to hopefully keep my men alive in the process.
I watched Yulia as she and her bodyguard snaked through the trees. It doesn’t matter what my opinion is of her and the Presidential Guard, I thought begrudgingly, this liaison officer is critical to my mission. I would provide the vital communication link between the FEA and the offensive support assets that the Union had provided to them, but Yulia provided me the link to the FEA command itself. Without her, I wouldn’t know what they were doing, or how they wanted me to support them. Like her or not, I would have to work with her.
‘Blackjack-One-One-Charlie, this is Blackjack-One-Zero …’ Mr Barkley was calling me over the platoon net.
‘Blackjack-One-One-Charlie, send,’ I replied.
‘Roger, be aware that Blackjack-Two-Zero has called in fire onto the Loyalist artillery.’
That was good news, even if the sergeant major or sixth battalion recce didn’t manage to find every position, the Loyalists would still flap and move their guns somewhere safe, removing a major weapon in their arsenal.
‘Further to that,’ the platoon commander added, ‘Blackjack-One-Two-Charlie has now arrived with his liaison officer, and I am tasking him off to the western end of the river. You are to move to the east, to the location where I believe the Loyalists intend to cross.’
‘Understood.’
Corporal Abdi had arrived then, probably as frustrated as I was with the new addition to his section. I wondered if his liaison officer also demanded a bodyguard.
Suddenly there was a mighty boom over our heads, causing all of us, including Yulia, to duck. This time it was me who didn’t go for cover, motioning for my men to stand.
‘Railgun shells,’ I explained to them. ‘The sergeant major is calling in fire.’
More shells passed overhead, each one giving off a sonic boom as it travelled at terrific speed toward its target. I imagined them detonating above the Loyalist artillery, giving them a taste of their own medicine.
‘Your guns are firing now?’ Yulia asked, as she returned to her feet.
‘Yeah.’
I didn’t know what I expected her to do - hug me, say thank you, or even simply say ‘it was about time’ - but instead she simply turned and carried on walking, seemingly unimpressed by our sergeant major’s efforts.
‘Ungrateful bitch,’ Myers muttered as we followed on after her.
The dropship was being prepared just as we arrived. Sitting idle on the ground within a tiny clearing, it had been concealed beneath a massive thermal sheet, then covered in mud and vegetation for extra camouflage. I remembered what I had been told about the shortage of high-tech equipment in Edo and how far the FEA would go to protect it. Presumably there were several more dropships, all spread out and hidden across the forest until they were needed, so that no two could be destroyed by Loyalist artillery at once.
Such a shortage, and the strength of the Loyalist anti-aircraft screen, meant that the FEA couldn’t move its soldiers fast, not in great numbers anyway. Instead the dropships could only be used to perform short, sudden strikes into the Loyalists, before rapidly withdrawing again. Much of their campaign had been conducted on foot.
We watched as the dropship was prepared by several FEA soldiers, rain water pouring from the thermal sheet as they pulled it back to expose the hull of the craft. It was an Alliance dropship, I noticed, most likely left behind after the war. Most of the FEA equipment was old Alliance stock left behind in the warrens when they withdrew, augmented by new equipment bought from the Russians.
I had never seen an Alliance dropship. It appeared to follow a similar design principle to ours, with short, stubby wings that contained its weapons, and a ramp that led into the crew compartment at the back. The hull was low profile, so that it could hug the ground as it made its final approach, protecting itself from anti-aircraft weapons as much as it could. The major difference from our own design was that it also sported a turret on top, fitted with what appeared to be a railgun. It was like an odd crossover between a Union dropship and a gravtank.
‘We have many of these dropships,’ Yulia told us as we followed her around to the rear ramp, ‘but we do not wish for the Loyalists to know we have so many, not until the right moment.’
‘I see,’ I replied, humouring her as I took a look inside the compartment.
She was lying, of course. According to recent intelligence, the regular FEA and the Guard had no more than fifty dropships and fewer gravtanks - if they had any at all - and they simply didn’t have the infrastructure or the knowledge to build more of them. Edo had found its place amongst the planetary provinces as an exporter of raw materials - when it wasn’t under sanction. It barely made anything, and instead imported all of its military hardware. Unfortunately dropships weren’t cheap.
Yulia believed that any information she miss-fed to me would somehow end up reaching the Loyalists, I presumed. Fine, I thought, if she wants to believe that then I’ll let her.
We mounted up, each trooper taking his place while Yulia showed him how to buckle his belt.
‘You will have to hold on to your weapons,’ she warned. ‘They will not fit into our racks.’
‘Well, we’ll just have to pray that we don’t go into a spin,’ I answered gruffly as I clipped myself into my seat, taking the time to adjust my straps to hold me in place. Much to my amusement I found that their seats were slightly more comfortable than ours, and the compartment was slightly more spacious. Typical, I thought, the rag-tag FEA had a better dropship than we did!
Yulia and her bodyguard took their seats across from me. Unlike Makito, who looked slightly uneasy inside the compartment, the FEA captain quickly buckled her straps together and racked her rifle like she had done so a thousand times before. She had been in the Guard for a long while, I figured, perhaps even since the war, which made her little older than me.
‘We will be in flight for only a few minutes,’ she said to us all, ‘so do not get too comfortable.’
‘We know the score. Let’s do it.’
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The Relief in Place
I leapt from the dropship ramp, my boots squelching as they
landed in soft, wet mud. We had been dropped into a kilometre-wide stretch of marshland that separated the forest from the Ghandi River. Intersected by a network of tributary rivers that cut through the wall of trees behind us, the marsh was carpeted with thick grass and reeds that grew well above waist height. Far to the west were the highlands from which the Ghandi collected, towering high above the Bosque.
I brushed through the grass to look around the side of the dropship, using its hull as cover as I surveyed the battlefield along the length of the river to the north.
'Let’s go!' I yelled, pointing with my outstretched arm for the section to peel outward into a line facing the river.
I didn't turn to watch them do it, I could hear the rustle of grass and the splash of muddy water behind me as troopers bounded from the dropship and hurried into position.
We were a few hundred metres shy of the contact battle, concealed only by a few bushes and a thick cloud of smoke that drifted over the marsh. I knew that the smoke had been dropped by the warship orbiting somewhere kilometres above us in order to give cover for the FEA relief. I could make out figures in amongst the smoke a few hundred metres away, locked into a fire fight with an unseen opponent. Presumably the FEA were exchanging fire with Loyalist soldiers somewhere over the river. I noticed a dropship nearby, scorched and half-buried in the mud, and I quickly recognised that it was of Russian design, and bore Loyalist markings.
Suddenly a dart whizzed overhead, and I ducked my head instinctively. I doubted that anybody had spotted me through the smoke, since I could barely see friendly soldiers, let alone enemy, but whether the enemy could see me or not made no difference. His darts could still kill me.
The marsh was flat and featureless, and the only cover it offered was at the bottom of the smaller rivers that meandered through it. We would be hard-pressed to find a route that didn’t risk us being hit by stray gunfire, and even harder pressed to find a route that didn’t involve getting soaked.
EDEN (The Union Series) Page 12