‘Is he alright?’ Skelton asked from nearby.
Suddenly I looked back at the stack of sandbags, noticing something odd in the way that they were laid out in a circular shape on the floor. That wasn’t just a stack of unused sandbags, I realised, it was a burrow entrance! The command centre was underground, and the building above it was being used merely as additional defence against bombardment!
‘There!’ I pointed, and we swept across the room toward the entrance.
Skelton opened fire on my right, his mammoth hacking down two Loyalists as they broke cover from behind an upturned table. Yulia joined in, firing two darts into one of them as he tried to crawl away. Behind us, the remainder of the section dropped into the room, followed shortly after by the platoon commander and Corporal Abdi.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw part of the sandbag wall fall away, allowing light to burst into the room as it was ripped down by a massive metallic arm.
‘Suit!’ Corporal Abdi yelled, and as one the multiple opened fire in a single devastating volley that caused the massive machine to stagger backward. Troopers bounded across toward the hole, one of them ripping his launcher from his daysack.
My fire team remained focused onto the burrow entrance, and just as well we had. As we approached the sandbags, one of them moved slightly, and then they fell away as a Loyalist emerged from the ground.
Yulia shot him dead before he even made it halfway out of the hole, without even breaking her stride. Another Loyalist squeezed through the gap, meeting the same fate before he managed to throw his grenade. Instead of landing on the floor, the grenade fell back into the burrow, and someone below him screamed in horror.
The bodies of the two Loyalists jolted as the grenade detonated below them, splattering blood up onto the ceiling.
We reached the tunnel, just as another soldier attempted to break out from the smouldering hole, his visor shattered and blood pouring from his eyes and ears. Myers stabbed him in the chest, and then fired into the hole below.
A sudden burst of darts ripped through the bodies, striking the ceiling in a shower of sparks and causing us to topple backwards. I struck my helmet on the ground as I fell, and for a second I thought I would lose consciousness.
‘Fucking hell,’ Myers exclaimed, picking himself up from the ground. ‘They won’t take no for an answer!’
I got up onto my hands and knees, my mind spinning. It was as though the last of my strength had suddenly left me.
They won’t take no for an answer. My vision becoming blurred again as I struggled to understand something I knew to be important.
They won’t take no for an answer. They weren’t fighting with such ferocity because they were bloodthirsty - they were desperate. That was their only way out!
‘Sm-mart m-missile!’ I blurted, my words becoming muddled. Myers blinked at me, concerned that I was on my hands and knees, and alarmed at the Loyalists struggling to emerge from the burrow. ‘Only way out …’
Yulia’s eyes widened as she suddenly understood what I was saying. ‘The burrow only has one entrance! A smart missile will kill them all!’
Myers snapped into action, grasping his launcher and preparing it to fire. Yulia and Skelton sprayed their weapons into the hole, stepping back as the Loyalists returned fire.
The command bunker had clearly been built at short notice, its burrow dug out with only one entrance. It wasn’t supposed to be a fighting position after all - its staff would withdraw long before the FEA arrived. They hadn’t expected for us to attack from above, though. Now, trapped inside their underground lair, they were fighting with everything they had to escape. A single smart missile, with its powerful charge, would make the same mess inside the burrow as it had before, except this time there were even less entrances for the pressure to escape. We could kill them all in an instant.
Myers ran with his launcher back toward the hole.
‘Make it count, mate!’ Skelton shouted, as the young trooper stuck the weapon into the hole and fired.
The missile leapt into the tunnel, and the fire team had less than a second to dive out of the way before it detonated inside the chamber below with a mighty thump.
I collapsed onto the ground, my arms no longer able to hold my body up.
‘Man down!’
Once again those words. Once again it was me who was the casualty. Hands grasped at my datapad as somebody went to check my vital readings.
‘He’s got an internal bleed!’ I heard Myers shout.
The world appeared to move in slow motion, and as I watched, Puppy’s fire team stormed into the burrow, their weapons roaring as they fired into the belching smoke. Nearby, the platoon commander orchestrated the defence of the building, which was now under attack from a suit and several Loyalists across the street. Darts whizzed through the air and explosions rocked the ground beneath me as the battle raged on.
‘Can you help him?’ Yulia sounded genuinely concerned as she leant over to look at me.
Skelton ignored her. ‘Shit, I don’t even know what to do with this. Who’s the section medic?’
Myers thought for a second, and then shook his head in dismay. ‘Wildgoose …’
‘Jesus … who’s fucking idea was that? Medic! Man down!’
My eyes fluttered for a moment, as I felt the life draining from my body. My war on Eden was over. Finally I would have peace.
‘Corporal Abdi, give us your medic! Andy’s down!’
‘I’m busy, deal with it yourself for now!’
‘I FUCKING CAN’T!’
I lost consciousness.
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Evacuation
I heard a familiar voice as I opened my eyes again, although it wasn’t one I wanted to hear.
'You fought well, Andy,' Yulia said approvingly.
I opened my eyes to see her kneeling beside where I lay. She wasn’t wearing her helmet or respirator, and her long, dark hair flowed freely over her shoulders. She stared down at me with the same cold, blank expression that I had grown used to, and again I found myself wondering what went on in her mind. Suddenly my eyes flicked to her rifle, which she cradled across her lap, and noticed that her bayonet was still fixed and stained red with blood.
She noticed my eye movements. 'The battle continued in the command centre after you went down. The fight was bloody.'
I realised that my body was strapped into a stretcher, and I was rendered virtually immobile. We were in a square, windowless room - presumably somewhere in Dakar.
I had survived, and to make it worse I was still in the presence of my Guard liaison officer. I sighed deeply as the information sunk in.
'You wish you had died,' Yulia said sadly.
I said nothing for a moment, deciding to ignore her statement, then asked, 'Where’s the platoon?'
She flicked her head toward the doorway. ‘Outside. They are using this building to rest. I thought that I would come to see how you are.’
I would have been flattered by her concern, if she wasn’t part of an army guilty of mass murder.
‘I’m fine,’ I said curtly. I flexed my fingers and toes, testing that everything was still working. So the platoon had survived the battle, or at least some of them had. If anything, that was a relief - I couldn't bear knowing that more of my comrades had died. ‘So the FEA were successful?’ I asked.
She considered the question, and then nodded. ‘Yes. The Loyalists withdrew when their command centre fell. The FEA killed many of them as they ran, but did not kill as many as we wanted. Many Loyalists escaped, and now they flee to the north.’
‘Well, at least you have what you want. Another few kilometres and the border will be restored, and then perhaps we can negotiate a cease fire. That’s what you want, right? Peace?’
She studied me, as though she were searching for a hidden meaning in my words. She must know what the Guard were plotting - how could she not? We thought that we were helping them to save their people, but really they
didn’t care about them any more than the Union did. They merely wanted power.
‘I have never experienced peace,’ she said finally. ‘I doubt that it will ever return to Eden. Too much blood has already been spilt.’
She was silent for a while, as though trying to work out what to say next. Finally her eyes flicked down to her datapad and she rose to her feet, pulling her respirator back over her face.
‘I must go now, Andy. The other liaison officer has already left. You have completed your mission, but my work is not yet finished. I hope that you return to your family one day. Maybe then you will find your peace.’
Before I could respond, Myers appeared from behind my head, fixing Yulia with a glare, before stooping over to look down at me. He grinned. 'How you doing down there?'
Yulia raised a hand in goodbye, before leaving the room. I watched her go, thinking about the last few words she had said: ‘You have completed your mission, but my work is not finished’ … what did she mean by that?
Myers followed my eyes and blinked. ‘No! You’re not falling in love with the psycho mass murderer, are you? Your injuries are worse than I thought!’
I frowned. ‘Shut up, you belter, don’t be ridiculous!’
He ignored my rebuke. ‘Well? How do you feel?’
I thought about it … 'I hurt all over.'
He laughed then. 'Well, you did take a grenade to the face, and then fought for several hours with your blood sloshing round inside you!'
I remembered collapsing beside the command centre entrance. I wondered what damage had been done to my body by my refusal to be extracted from the battle.
'How bad am I?'
'A few bleeds where you reopened a couple of external injuries,’ he responded. ‘You’ve probably given yourself some pretty nasty scars, I’m afraid.’
‘I don’t give a shit about scars.’
‘The main injury is a piece of shrapnel that punched into your guts. A team medic injected you with internal clot. It’s some pretty nasty shit, apparently, so you can’t move. It’s slowed down the bleeding, but the Boss wants you out quick. We’re extracting soon anyway.’
‘I’m fine!’ I argued. ‘Let me up and I’ll walk out of the city.’
Myers shook his head. ‘No, I’m not falling for that again. You’re crazy, mate. You could have died!’
‘I’m not a prisoner, Myers!’ I argued, losing my patience rapidly. ‘Undo the bastard straps!’
Myers lowered his voice, leaning down close to me. He blinked as he spoke in a whisper, ‘I know what you were doing when you were in that alleyway after the fight in that bar, and I know what you said in the burrow when you took the grenade.’
I cast my mind back, remembering in fuzzy detail what had happened in the smoke-filled chamber. Let me go, I had said. My lips tightened.
‘I haven’t told anyone,’ he added, after a long pause.
Myers knew that I’d wanted to die, and he had clearly decided that he wasn’t going to let me out of the stretcher.
I spoke slowly. ‘I’d never do anything that unnecessarily endangered the lives of my men.’
‘I know,’ he said, ‘we’ve all seen you fight.’
‘And I wouldn’t do anything stupid.’
He sighed, checking behind him to make sure nobody was around to hear. ‘You don’t care about your own life. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the brightest trooper in the galaxy, but even I know that’s pretty stupid.’
I blinked in surprise at the young trooper’s speech. First I had been lectured by the sergeant major, then Yulia, and now the youngest trooper in my section was having a go too - even though he was barely twenty-years-old. Myers spoke to me like an old veteran, wise beyond his years. That’s what being close to death did to you.
‘Where are we?’ I asked, after a long, drawn-out silence.
‘A building on the southern end of Dakar,’ he replied, apparently glad to change the subject.
I looked down and inspected my body. My combats were stained red with blood, and were coated in mud and soot.
I laughed bitterly. ‘Look at the state of me!’
‘At least we didn’t need to plug your arse like Gritt,’ Myers chuckled mischievously.
I glared at him for a second, but there was no malice in his remark. ‘Well, thank God for that.’
There was a commotion just out of my vision then, and Myers looked up in alarm as the section crowded into the room, hurriedly pulling their respirators back over their heads.
‘Good to see you’re awake, Andy,’ Puppy said, as several troopers grasped my stretcher, grunting as they lifted me, and one pulled my respirator back over my face. ‘We’re extracting out of the city. Let’s go!’
I was carried out of the room at speed, onto a landing and then down a staircase. It echoed with the sound of urgent shouting, and I recognised the voice of the sergeant major as I was carried onto the ground floor.
‘Let’s move, men!’ he hollered, stalking along a corridor, as troopers frantically grabbed their kit. ‘Respirators on, weapons powered! Form-up outside!’
I was carried toward a glass airlock, and we waited while Puppy found the button to open the internal door.
I looked around at the panicked platoon. ‘What’s going on?’
Puppy opened his mouth to speak, but was cut short as the sergeant major stepped in and smashed the glass through with his rifle butt.
‘Don’t piss around, Puppy,’ he raged, ‘no one’s sending you a bill! Get him outside now!’
The section hurried me through the airlock, ignoring the alarm that wailed as Puppy kicked the outer door open.
Dakar had taken a beating. Fires raged across the city - black smoke poured from smashed out windows and holes blown through buildings. Masonry lay strewn across the street, as well as the bodies of fallen soldiers, FEA and Loyalists alike. Panicked shouts carried across the city, and somewhere a woman screamed.
Several civilians ran past us, clutching at random household items. One of them spotted us, dropping an item of clothing in his surprise. He gaped at us for a second, shocked by the sight of Union troops, before a woman grabbed his arm and dragged him away.
‘The FEA have been ordered to withdraw,’ Puppy explained to me as they set me down, waiting for the remainder of the platoon to get outside. The sergeant major’s bellowing voice echoed though the building, terrorising the remaining troopers.
‘Get out you fucking weasels! You have ten seconds, or I’m leaving you behind! That means you too, Boss!’
I frowned. ‘Withdraw? Why?’
‘We think the Guard are coming.’
I turned to look at the sky as the revelation sunk in. We had succeeded in enabling the FEA to take Dakar, but our efforts had all been in vain - they had beaten the Loyalists, but not the political will of the Guard, who had ordered them to leave so that they could do their work. Now it was a race against time before we met the same fate as the people of Dakar.
‘Go, go!’ I heard the sergeant major yell, whipping one of the sections into a frenzy as they burst from the glass airlock and onto the street. ‘You know where you’re doing, Corporal Stanton! Get a grip of these men and get them to the city entrance now!’
Boots pounded as the section ran off down the street, hurrying toward the city entrance. I presumed that they had been tasked to hold it open at all costs, so that the platoon could extract through it.
The platoon commander and his team followed them out, still adjusting his helmet. Clearly the platoon had been resting, expecting an easy extraction. No such luck. Now that the Guard were coming, there was no way EJOC would allow a squadron of dropships into Dakar. We had to escape, or we would all die in the city.
More casualties came out of the building, one on a stretcher and two more walking wounded. The sergeant major checked each of us off - counting to make sure we were all out.
Another stretcher emerged from the building, and the sergeant major’s head shot arou
nd to stare in alarm at the last section as they brought it out onto the street.
‘He doesn’t come!’ he shouted, and the section hesitated. ‘Put him down! We don’t have the luxury to bring our dead! Jesus Christ, men, wake up!’ The section placed down the stretcher as the sergeant major stormed up to them. ‘Strip his kit,’ he ordered, his voice returning to normal. ‘Datapad, ammo - definitely take that. Good. Give me one of his grenades.’
He lifted the dead trooper slightly, and then placed the grenade under it, activating it once his body rested against the fly-off lever. He tugged at the troopers’ combats, making sure that the grenade couldn’t be seen.
‘Now leave him,’ he said, his beady eyes darting across the platoon. ‘He’ll forgive us all when we all get to hell. Prepare to move!’
The platoon repeated the command, and I was lifted back into the air.
‘Boss,’ he said, turning to the platoon commander. ‘I’m off!’
The platoon commander nodded. ‘Roger!’
‘Right, let’s go! Get these stretchers moving!’
My stretcher rocked as my section broke into a run, following on behind the sergeant major. His protection group split off either side of the street, scanning the buildings as the train of casualties limped or were carried south toward the city entrance. Somewhere behind, Mr Barkley brought up the rear with Corporal Abdi’s section.
A withdrawal runs in reverse to an attack, with the platoon commander at the rear, facing the direction of enemy threat, whilst the platoon sergeant - in this case a job carried out by the sergeant major - maintained the movement of the withdrawing sections and managed the extraction of casualties. The problem for us was that we didn’t really know where the direction of enemy threat was anymore.
The platoon ran through the ruined city, weaving through rubble and leaping over knocked down walls. All the time rifles were raised, every trooper scanning the buildings for Loyalists left behind, or Presidential Guard soldiers arriving in the city to begin their killing spree.
We passed tens of civilians, running through the city like terrified animals. Some of them screamed and argued, while others simply sat in the rubble and wailed, waiting for their fate. They knew that the Presidential Guard were coming, and they knew their destiny - first they had been used as slaves and a human shield by the Loyalists, and now they would be killed by the President’s private army.
EDEN (The Union Series) Page 28