The water sloshed and slapped against the trench walls as we ran from the attacking LSV’s, chunks of mud raining down upon our helmets as they hammered the ground above us indiscriminately. They didn’t know where we were, nor did it matter, so long as they managed to get close enough to deploy their dismounts. Vehicles, though terrifying to fight against, were particularly vulnerable against trenches, where dismounted troops could move out of sight.
Behind us the ground thumped as a missile struck home, avoiding the fire from the automated guns. Seconds later, I heard a screech of brakes as one of the LSV’s skidded up to the crater, its cannon firing directly into it. There were no troopers there, though, just a single wailing Guardsman, surrounded by bodies.
My headset then magnified the electric whining of another vehicle, and my eyes widened; one of the LSV’s was approaching the trench we were running along, threatening to cut us off.
‘Stop!’ I shouted in warning.
A series of explosions rocked the ground beneath our feet, causing us all to drop into the water.
‘Look out!’ somebody shouted in terror, and the troopers at the front of the section stumbled backward as if trying to avoid something.
An LSV emerged over the top of the trench in front of Puppy, speeding toward us as if it had no intention of stopping. Its front two wheels slid over the edge of the trench, its weight causing the earth to collapse around it, and Puppy had only seconds to leap backward from the vehicle as it fell into the trench with a mighty thump, its rear end shooting up into the air. Smoke poured from a hole where its turret had been.
‘Shit the bed!’ Myers exclaimed in surprise at the sudden appearance of the destroyed vehicle.
‘It’s the saucers! Come on, my boys!’ Skelton pumped his fist at the sky jubilantly.
I didn’t join in with him, instead I pointed furiously at the back of the LSV, pushing my way to the front of the section.
‘Cover the back door!’ I yelled.
Weapons snapped upward as the section picked themselves out of the mud.
Knowing that it was no longer able to fight, the LSV opened its rear door to allow its human cargo to escape. With the vehicle beyond a forty-five degree angle, they’d have a job to get out, though.
Somebody tried to scramble out of the open door, but Wildgoose shot him instantly. Another rifle then poked out of the door just as the hapless Militiaman fell, and it sprayed the trench on automatic, forcing us to duck.
Puppy did the opposite. Standing right next to the side of the LSV, he was out of the rifle’s arc. He sensed the opportunity, and with no thought for his own safety he scrambled out of the trench, snatching a grenade out of his pouches.
A Militiaman managed to jump out of the vehicle, just as Puppy leapt upward and tossed the grenade into the rear compartment.
For a second I thought that Puppy was doomed, but the resulting explosion caused the escaped Militiaman to jump in shock, and that moment’s pause allowed somebody else to shoot him square in the chest.
‘Get back in the trench!’ I shouted, and the 2ic, needing no encouragement, threw himself to the ground and scrambled the last metre to safety. I grabbed him by the straps of his daysack and yanked him down. He landed in the water below with a splash.
Wildgoose helped me pull him to his feet, grinning from ear to ear.
‘You should play professional basketball, mate!’ Wildgoose quipped.
Puppy’s respirator seal had been broken by his fall, and he lifted it away, draining the water before pressing it back to his face, replying, ‘I’ll look into it when I get home.’
‘I’m just impressed he managed to get out of the trench,’ Myers said.
I ignored the exchange of banter, quickly assessing the change in situation. The LSV was blocking our path, but another LSV had attacked the crater behind us. Had the saucers destroyed it as well? And had it deployed its dismounts?
I checked the status of the saucers on my datapad, but to my surprise I found that they were still struggling to find a way to approach from the north. Heavy fire from the Militia and the threat from the Guard’s automated guns were preventing them from getting close. So who had destroyed the LSV?
‘Andy!’ a familiar voice called out from the other side of the vehicle; it was Corporal Abdi.
I paused for a second, taken aback by the arrival of Two Section.
‘You took your time getting here, mate!’
‘Well …’ he said, jokingly, over the noise of battle. ‘We thought you were doing such a great job we’d just leave you to it! You all alright?’
I looked around at my section, as well as the two surviving Guardsmen.
‘Just about. I take it that was you that took out the LSV?’
‘Yeah! The Guard dealt with the one behind you!’
‘The one behind me?’ I asked, lifting my rifle back over the trench to look back toward the crater.
‘Yeah. It’s toast, mate!’
The LSV that had attacked the crater was now on its side, smoke billowing from its ruptured hull. The other enemy vehicles were nowhere to be seen. Instead I saw tens of Guardsmen charging forward to relieve the battered company that had held the Militia at bay. It was One Company, I realised, who must have been sent forward by the CO once the platoon commander had managed to explain to him how close he was to failing his mission. Amongst the fresh Guardsmen were members of their support company, bringing with them an assortment of heavy weapons - automated guns and missiles - to defend against another enemy counterattack. I could still hear gunfire off to our west, but at last it seemed as though the battle was under control once more.
‘Your mates have finally decided to turn up,’ I said to one of the two Guardsmen who had followed us.
The girl looked at me, perplexed, until the translation in her headset sunk in. She raised her own rifle to look, and then jabbered something to her comrade.
‘One Company is here,’ my own headset translated. ‘We are saved.’
Without another word, the two Guardsmen ran back along the trench, seeking out whatever remained of their platoon.
‘You’re welcome!’ Myers shouted after them.
Ignoring the disgruntled cursing at their lack of gratitude, Puppy strode up to me with a look of relief upon his face.
‘Thank God for that.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘That was pretty crazy.’
‘It was a good call,’ he said earnestly. ‘Those two saucers are still nowhere to be seen.’
I nodded. ‘The Guard made sure of that.’
I swept through the menus on my visor display, discovering that the two saucers had in fact abandoned their attempt at approaching from the north, and had returned to a holding pattern in the upper atmosphere, waiting to be called for again.
‘I don’t think they’ll be of any more use until the Guard sort their guns out,’ I said gloomily, returning control of the saucers back to Mr Barkley. I called out to Corporal Abdi: ‘What’s going on now, mate?’
‘We might as well leave this lot to it,’ he replied. ‘If they can’t hold the Militia back with a whole extra company, we might as well give up and do a runner!’
10
Fire Support
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We left the Guard to finish the job on the northern edge of the hill, confident that they now had the manpower and the weaponry to complete their objective and hold back any further counterattacks by the Militia. Instead we turned our attention to a new problem: the incorrect siting of support weapons to the east of the hill.
The chance that the remaining Militia might attack from the east was minimal, given that the hill was particularly steep and rocky in that direction, but Cellini was also out to the east. One of the Guard’s key objectives was to establish an effective fire support position in order to help the second FEA battalion to seize the village. So far they hadn’t succeeded, resulting in the FEA taking horrendous casualties.
Mr Barkley had done
a good job in spurring the Guard headquarters into action. Apparently the Commanding Officer had not been aware of how close his battalion was to failing its mission, but now he was making every effort to move his companies - in particular Support Company - into their correct positions.
We made ourselves useful by helping the Guard to move their remaining automated guns from the centre of the hill toward the eastern edge. It was hard work - every gun was essentially a smaller version of a Vulcan cannon, mounted onto a tripod, loaded with tens of ammunition containers that attached to its side. Even when fully disassembled, moving each gun was still a backbreaking task, earning members of any dropship Guns Platoon the nickname “Humperdumps”, or “Humpers and Dumpers”. They were often hand-picked from the biggest, most brutish of all troopers in their battalions, expected to carry the guns over arduous terrain for tens of kilometres. The same couldn’t be said for their Guard equivalent.
Gloved hands reached up toward the beating rain as the latest gun was lowered into the trenches, having been carried across the hill. Now that all of Hill Kilo had been secured and the FEA had cleared deep into the warren beneath it, equipment could be moved freely in the open, speeding up the movement of ammunition, supplies and casualties.
We crowded around the large, two-metre-long weapon, grasping it by its numerous carrying handles as we lowered it to waist level ready to be carried. Although designed from lightweight composites to make it man portable, the gun component must have weighed in excess of forty kilos. Myers and Griffiths grunted as they took the weight, staggering slightly in the wet mud as the Guardsmen stepped away, seemingly happy to let us do their work for them.
I realised that not a single Guardsman had made an effort to take the gun, and I slapped one of them on the back angrily. ‘Don’t just stand there and let them do it! Give them a hand!’
The Guardsman obediently grabbed the barrel of the gun, allowing Myers to step away.
‘Come on!’ I urged the other Guardsmen. ‘These are your guns, aren’t they? Your mates in the FEA need you!’
Ordinarily the Guardsmen might have glared at me, or even threatened me for ordering them around, but they knew that I was right. They could hear the sound of battle on the low ground clearly enough. The latest FEA battalion had landed in the forest and were commencing their attack onto the village - with less than half the fire support they had been promised.
The remaining parts of the gun were slid into the trench, including the tripod and the ammunition boxes, and troopers and Guardsmen hurried to grab whatever kit they could until everything was ready to go.
A large, older Guardsman NCO approached me, having noticed me barking orders at his men. He was the only member of the group that looked as though he should be in Guns Platoon, with a wide jaw and a lumbering gait.
‘Where are we taking the weapon?’ he asked in broken English, looking me up and down disdainfully.
‘As far to the east as you can get it,’ I replied, gesturing toward the edge of the hill and the battle below.
‘You know the way?’
I nodded. Four Section had already recorded the layout of the eastern trenches on the net so that we could move through them quickly.
‘Show me.’
I needed no encouragement, quickly spinning on my heel and charging off through the mud, beckoning for everyone to follow.
Tens of boots slapped in the mud as the gun was carried through the trenches toward the edge of the hill. Soldiers cursed and troopers swore as the big robotic weapon was manhandled through the tight confines of the trench. There was no longer the need for any of us to keep quiet, and the Guard NCO and I both barked and hounded the mixture of troopers and Guardsmen as we hurried the weapon toward its destination.
‘Well done, lads!’ I shouted at them all, as they struggled to manoeuvre the gun around a tight corner in the trench. ‘Keep going! We can win this battle! The Loyalists have already run away, and the Militia don’t have the stomach to keep fighting!’
Occasionally I stepped back to help, doing everything I could to make sure the gun made it to the edge of the hill as soon as possible. I felt somehow responsible for the FEA who were now fighting a desperate battle for the village. It was me that had sited their landing zones in the forest, making sure that they could land as quickly and safely as possible, and if they failed their mission now, then it would have all been for nothing.
Bursts of gunfire rang out along the lip of the hill as one of the Guard companies engaged targets around the village, doing whatever they could to help the assaulting FEA reach Cellini.
‘Watch your feet!’ I warned, as I stepped over discarded equipment and scattered corpses - the result of a Loyalist smart missile.
As I turned back to watch them negotiate the obstacle, I saw that the Guardsmen had abandoned carrying the gun, and had instead left it for my section whilst they carried the smaller items. Griffiths now carried it along with Wildgoose, and with faces fixed with grim determination, the two troopers powered forward, allowing me to increase my pace.
It angered me to see my own men doing the work for the Guard, despite their greater numbers, but I knew that the Union troopers were far stronger, and that time was not on our side.
‘Well done, lads,’ I praised again, striding out as I navigated the last few bends in the trench until I reached the frontline, catching my first glimpse of the village and the battle below.
Cellini was probably once a village – but now it was a town. Nestled right up against the edge of the hill, it was at least two kilometres across, and dissected by four wide roads that approached from all four directions, meeting in a square at its centre. In the middle of the square sat the air factory - a huge chimney-shaped structure taller than the hill itself, shrouded in a veil of smoke.
I could instantly see why it was so important that the high ground was held. Hill Kilo sloped so steeply away to the east that it provided a dominating vantage point, giving the occupier the ability to rain fire down onto the Militia in the village below.
I didn’t have the time to admire the view. I could just about make out the shapes of embattled FEA soldiers attempting to cross the strip of farmland between the forest and the village, their frantic shouts and desperate screams now clearly audible.
An entire Guard platoon was occupying a ruined trench that ran along the eastern edge of the hill. Many of them were firing down at Cellini and the surrounding farmland, whilst others scurried through the trench with their heads low, bringing in fresh ammunition and carrying casualties away.
I stopped short of the platoon, stealing a glance over the top of the trench for somewhere suitable to site the gun. I didn’t know much about support weapons, but I knew that the gun needed room for its tripod - an area roughly two metres wide.
Wildgoose grunted as he and Griffiths lowered the gun to the ground behind me. The tall sniper bent over and placed his hands on his knees, arching his back with a painful groan.
‘Christ, that thing’s a pain in the arse to drag through a trench!’ he complained.
‘Nah, you’re both just weak,’ Myers quipped from behind - though he too sounded tired. He was cradling the gun’s targeting computer in his arms. The computer itself was relatively small, but its protective casing wasn’t.
Wildgoose laughed at the comment, while Griffiths simply frowned, struggling to understand the young trooper’s sense of humour.
I suddenly noticed the press of Guardsmen forming up behind us, each of them carrying parts of the gun.
‘Spread out!’ I snapped, flicking them away with my hand. ‘The fucking enemy’s just down there!’
They didn’t respond at first - until the Guard NCO emerged from around the corner, barking instructions at them angrily, sending them scattering back down the trench.
He squeezed past the gun and arrived at my side, ducking forward to avoid being shot by a sniper in the village. He then took a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure that his men were spread
out, turned back, and exhaled a jaded sigh.
‘I apologise for my soldiers,’ he said.
For a moment I pondered over the stark contrast between the butch, motivated NCO and the rather soppy Guardsmen under his command. He was a typical Guns Platoon soldier; his men were anything but.
The NCO lifted his massive head briefly, scanning the edge of the hill. Unlike us, he didn’t appear to have the ability to use his rifle camera - either that or he didn’t care to use it.
‘That is where we shall put it,’ he said, gesturing along the length of the trench.
I raised my head to see what I was being shown. Ten metres further along the trench was a flattened bunker, the surrounding crater providing a perfect makeshift fire trench just large enough to fit the gun.
Several other Guardsmen stood up to risk their own glances, seemingly oblivious to the risk posed by the gunfight below - until a furious glare from the NCO caused them to duck back down.
‘Good?’ he asked me.
I nodded. ‘Yeah, good. You know where to place it better than I do!’
The NCO took up the lead and we followed on, careful now not to reveal the presence of the gun being moved along the hill. I hadn’t heard any smart missiles for a while. Perhaps the Militia had simply run out of them, after all, the Loyalists had already supposedly taken much of their weapons and ammunition across the border. On the other hand, though, perhaps they were saving them until they knew they’d score a hit on a worthy target …
Several of the nearby Guard platoon watched us as we moved up to the bunker, and word of the gun’s arrival quickly spread along their line. They were clearly relieved that the robotic weapon had arrived, and that it would soon enable them to stand down from the fire fight.
The Guard NCO stopped at the junction where the bunker connected to the trench, and then uttered an unintelligible string of curses.
I peered around the junction and saw that the entrance to the bunker had collapsed, along with the roof.
‘We’ll have to go over the top,’ I concluded.
RECCE (The Union Series Book 4) Page 16