‘Puppy!’ I called over the net. ‘Withdraw rearwards! I’m gonna peel!’
‘Roger! Moving!’
I didn’t turn to look. There was no time. There were more crosshairs in amongst the trees now, and the enemy fire was increasing. They were coming for us.
‘Peel right!’ I yelled.
The message quickly passed, and I heard branches snapping as Griffiths broke from his position and crashed through the undergrowth behind my fire team, initiating the manoeuvre.
We peeled as fast as we could, withdrawing back into the forest and away from the valley.
Darts whipped through the trees as we ran along the fire team line, one at a time, whilst the other three troopers fired wildly toward the advancing Militia. The manoeuvre was rapid, since there were only four of us as opposed to an entire section. No sooner had I taken up a position and fired a few rounds than I received a slap against my daysack, telling me I was next to move again.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Puppy’s fire team bounding rearwards through the forest, keeping his fire team at a right angle to mine as they continued to face toward the valley. As long as we maintained our L-shape, then we could continue to cover the enemy in both directions. It was unusual, but it was slick and it worked.
‘Puppy!’ I ordered. ‘Check fire if you can’t see any targets! Save your ammo!’
‘Roger!’
The crosshairs were getting closer, and for the first time I saw one of the Militiamen with my own eyes. He ran through the ferns less than thirty metres away, taking up a position behind a tree, before Skelton shot him square in the chest with a burst from his mammoth.
‘They’re getting closer!’ he warned, as he hefted the cumbersome weapon skywards and ran behind me, tapping my shoulder as he went.
I fired a several more rounds, giving Skelton time to run along the line before moving myself. If even one of us lost his nerve and ran too early, the peeling manoeuvre could quickly turn into a mess where everyone was running and nobody was firing.
Seeing that he had arrived at the far end of the line, I stood up and ran after him.
‘One-One-Charlie, One-Four-Charlie, this is One-Zero!’ Mr Barkley rasped over the net, clearly exhausted from his sprint rearwards. ‘Steer your withdrawals toward the location I’m marking now!’
A new crosshair appeared on my display, a hundred metres to the southwest. As I ran along the length of my fire team, I immediately saw that I couldn’t alter the direction of the peeling manoeuvre toward the crosshair, since it meant we would end up moving diagonally away from the enemy, with only the end man able to fire. We needed to change our formation.
‘Stop peeling!’ I shouted, dropping down into cover. ‘Puppy! Form up on me! Grenade launchers, give me smoke!’
A second later every launcher in my section fired, and a second after that the forest erupted into a shower of burning phosphor, quickly turning into a wall of smoke that shrouded the enemy from us.
Without lowering our rate of fire, we quickly altered our formation back into a single line, ready to withdraw in the new direction.
Satisfied with the formation, I lifted my head to shout, ‘Baseline! Go firm!’
The word of command “baseline” told the troopers in my section not to move any more, the desired formation being reached.
‘Puppy!’ I yelled. ‘Did you see the boss’s mark?’
‘Yeah!’
‘You bound first!’
‘Roger!’
Under Puppy’s command, Delta Fire Team bounded rearwards, whilst mine continued to fire. As the section commander, I always moved last in a withdrawal, maintaining my position closest to the enemy. It made tactical as well as moral sense.
I caught fleeting glimpses of shadows moving through the smoke, and I fired in their direction in order to slow the enemy advance.
‘Fuck off, you bastards!’ Skelton raged, as his mammoth gun sprayed the smoke with darts.
I shared his anger and frustration at the Militia’s relentless attack. They were mindless, running and firing at us from all angles like a human wave, but it was working. They were pushing us backward, almost literally, and despite our best efforts, the distance between them and us was decreasing.
Puppy’s fire team finished their bound and resumed firing.
‘Andy, move!’ he yelled.
‘Move!’ I repeated over the noise, and we turned and ran rearward, tearing through thick ferns and branches as we bounded in the direction of Mr Barkley’s crosshair.
‘All call signs,’ the platoon commander announced, ‘I have arranged a series of pincushions at the location I gave you previously. You will withdraw to that location, where we will then detonate the pincushions before continuing to withdraw in echelon.’
I understood the platoon commander’s plan. It was as simple as he could make it, and with the desperate chaos of our withdrawal through the forest, simplicity was exactly what we needed. My section, along with Four Section - who were conducting their own fighting withdrawal to the west - were sucking our overzealous opponents toward us, funnelling them in to a single point. We would then activate the pincushions, and the devastating shower of darts they unleashed into the forest would provide us with the shock factor we needed to break into a more organised platoon withdrawal.
We bounded rearward several more times, until I spotted the platoon commander waving frantically beside his hovering blue crosshair.
‘Go firm here!’ he shouted, stopping Puppy’s fire team as they reached the crosshair.
I completed my final bound, bringing my own fire team back in line with Puppy, and as one we turned to face the enemy, mindful of the mass of green crosshairs approaching us from the west. Four Section were less than a hundred metres away, and I could just catch glimpses of them bounding back through the trees. One of them was being carried - a casualty alert flashing over him.
‘The pincushions are either side of you position!’ Mr Barkley shouted to me. ‘Sync with them now!’
I fell to the ground in response to his command, keeping myself out of the line of fire whilst I tapped commands into my datapad. There was no point in me being visible if I wasn’t adding anything to the battle. Instead I busied myself taking control of the pincushions from Mr Barkley.
Pincushions were passive devices that never transmitted over the net, instead waiting for the signal to activate from the man that sited them. This way they were virtually impossible to detect, since they lay totally dormant, but it also meant that only one person could use them - unless he handed their channel and activation code across to somebody else, either by the net or by optical cable.
With the boss still live on the net, it took me seconds to find the two pincushions and sync with them, causing two icons to appear amongst the undergrowth either side of my section. When I chose to activate them, the two powerful magnetic devices would shower the forest in a wall of darts so thick that they could literally cut down trees.
‘I’ve got them!’ I shouted at the platoon commander, getting back up from the ground.
‘Roger! Four Section will set up a fall-back position behind you!’
‘No worries!’
Four Section were already passing less than twenty metres to our left, still firing as they bounded backward toward the fall-back position somewhere to our rear. Both our two sections had now effectively converged, drawing the Loyalists inward, and the noise of the battle reached a crescendo as all of the fighting became centred around a single point on the battlefield.
Once they had passed behind us, Four Section broke their line and ran backward, handing the battle over to us. With their firepower gone, and nothing but the enemy ahead of us, the desperation of our situation became clear. I couldn’t tell how many Militia there were around us, but there must have been at least a platoon of them, possibly even a company. Red crosshairs flickered everywhere as they continued their advance, barely affected by the casualties we were inflicting upon them. T
here were no manoeuvres, no tactics - just pure, mindless aggression. Every time one of them was hit, another seemed to take his place. The sheer weight of their firepower was forcing us to duck further and further downwards, to the point where I doubted the accuracy of our own weapons.
‘They’re everywhere!’ Myers exclaimed over the din. He was lying virtually flat on the ground, holding up his rifle to spray the forest whilst using his camera to see.
‘We’ve got to blow those pincushions!’ Puppy hollered.
He was right. Regardless of whether or not Four Section had reached their fall-back position, we needed to move or risk being overrun. Most of us had been forced into whatever cover we could find whilst volleys of darts sprayed over our heads.
I tapped a finger against my datapad, activating the pincushions. With a shrill shriek, the powerful magnetic devices blasted a wall of steel needles into the forest, causing it to disappear in a cloud of sawdust, mud and vegetation. Several trees toppled, their trunks torn to pieces. The enemy fire stopped instantly, and a stunned silence fell over the forest as the dust settled.
‘One Section, prepare to withdraw!’ I bellowed, quickly scrambling back to my feet.
The remainder of the section emerged from the undergrowth, and it was then that I saw that Skelton was flashing yellow on my visor. He’d been shot, and groaned painfully as he struggled to stand up.
‘Man down!’ I shouted, sprinting toward the stricken trooper. ‘Griffiths, give me a hand!’
I needn’t have said anything, for the Welsh trooper was already running toward Skelton before I had even opened my mouth.
I reached Skelton and quickly surveyed his wounds. It was hard to tell in the dark, but it looked as though he had been shot in the upper thigh, the dart having taken quite a large chunk of flesh away. I desperately hoped that a major artery hadn’t been severed, because there was no time to stop and treat him.
Griffiths and I hooked our arms under his armpits and snatched him to his feet. Then without a moment’s hesitation we ran southward, half dragging our casualty along with us.
‘Break contact!’ I shouted, and as one the remainder of the section turned and ran after us.
Vines and branches tore at my equipment as we forced our way through thick undergrowth, cutting a path back toward Four Section who were still forming up on their new position a hundred metres away. We were directly between them and the Militia, and I spurred my body to move faster, knowing that my troopers were in the way and that nobody would be able to fire until we had moved.
The enemy fire appeared to have stopped for a moment, their attack having paused as they reeled from the sudden onslaught from the pincushions. A glimmer of hope formed in my mind as I ran, and I wondered if we had finally knocked the fight out of the Militia. There had been so many red crosshairs visible when I had fired the pincushions, the effect of them must have been devastating.
My hope was quickly dashed, though, as a fresh volley of darts passed overhead.
‘These people are crazy!’ Skelton panted, as he tried to help us carry him to safety by limping on his good leg. His body must have given him a shot of adrenalin in response to his injury, since he didn’t seem to be in much pain.
‘No shit!’ Griffiths agreed between ragged breaths.
I headed toward the blue crosshair that marked Four Section’s fall-back position, the remainder of my men converging to follow on behind me.
My visor quickly identified the platoon commander, who waited just behind Four Section. They were now set up in a line, weapons raised and ready to engage the enemy once we were clear.
‘Come on, One Section!’ Mr Barkley urged us all on over our section net.
But there was no need for him to hurry us, for just as he spoke another hail of darts cracked and hissed over our heads, driving us on. The enemy had regained some of his composure, and his attack hadn’t finished yet.
I bounded past Corporal Kamara, who crouched low amongst a tangle of vines. We exchanged a quick glance and a nod, but neither of us spoke, our minds were too preoccupied for conversation.
A burst of darts struck a tree nearby to me, showering me with splinters and chipped bark as I ducked the last few metres toward the platoon commander.
Mr Barkley pointed southward, to where another crosshair had appeared another hundred metres away.
‘The sergeant major is now marking the withdrawal route. Keep your men moving!’ he instructed.
I nodded, crouching low as I turned to see my section closing into me, the last man passing through Four Section’s line.
Puppy slapped Corporal Kamara on the shoulder as he passed him. ‘Last man, mate!’
‘Roger!’ The section commander nodded, and then lifted his head to shout: ‘Four Section! Rapid … FIRE!’
‘Go, Corporal Moralee!’ Mr Barkley barked, just as Four Section opened fire.
I didn’t need to be told twice. I beckoned to my section with a wave of my arm. ‘Follow on behind me!’
Both my section and Corporal Kamara’s continued to bound rearwards several more times under the control of the platoon commander, dragging our respective casualties back to fresh fall-back positions whilst our counterparts provided cover. The sergeant major, lumbered with even more injured troopers, focused entirely on making best speed back toward Hill Kilo, stopping only to mark the withdrawal route and make sure that we were following.
Though the Militia were still firing at us, the distance between us and them had increased to the point where my visor could no longer identify targets, and eventually the platoon commander gave the call for the entire platoon to break contact. All weapons ceased firing, and as one we turned and ran from the advancing horde, dragging and carrying our casualties to safety. The sergeant major’s group took the lead, followed by Four Section, the platoon commander’s group and then my section, forming into a single line of troopers that snaked through the forest, running as fast as our human burdens allowed.
Behind us the Militia continued to fire wildly, though their rounds appeared to pass well above our heads, clipping the tops of the trees. They hadn’t worked out that we had broken contact, and were instead simply firing for the sake of it, wasting their ammunition.
‘Thank God they’re shit shots,’ Skelton hissed as we drew close to the hill.
‘They’re still coming, though!’ Griffiths panted in reply.
I glanced back over my shoulder. I couldn’t believe it, but he was right. The Militia were still chasing us. Although I still couldn’t see them, I could hear their shouting and the crashing of branches as they tried to regain contact. Our only saving grace was that they hadn’t yet realised that we had simply turned and ran. The confusion, the disorientation, and the sheer madness of our fight in the forest had thrown them partially off our scent, but they refused to give up. It was almost unbelievable. I had never seen a force behave so ferociously, or absorb so many casualties without faltering.
‘All call signs,’ Mr Barkley sounded over the net as we ran, ‘you are to inform me immediately upon breaking out of the forest that you have all your men present. We have our close air support.’
My eyes flicked skyward in a silent thanks to God.
‘We’ve got air support!’ I announced over the section net, eager to share the good news.
‘That’s if the Guard don’t shoot it down,’ Skelton grunted as he limped.
‘They won’t shoot it down this time,’ I replied, though I wasn’t sure whether I was trying to persuade him or me.
I kept my gaze focused onto the line of troopers leading away from me, cutting a path through the trees. Shafts of light had become visible, marking the edge of the forest only a few hundred metres away. We had almost made it.
‘My leg’s killing me,’ Skelton complained.
‘It will hurt,’ I said. ‘You’ve been shot, mate!’
‘It didn’t hurt earlier.’
‘That’s the adrenalin,’ Griffiths explained between breaths.
‘You’d be in a lot more pain right now without it!’
Suddenly a huge burst of darts ripped through the forest, cutting short our conversation. Several troopers dove to the ground, whilst others spun around to face the new threat. I looked back to see several crosshairs a hundred or so metres to our rear. The Militia had found us.
‘Keep moving!’ Mr Barkley ordered over the net, driving us on despite the fresh attack.
We ran with our heads as low as possible, weaving left and right in an attempt to throw off our enemy’s aim. The edge of the forest was less than a hundred metres away now, and I willed it closer, desperate for my men to survive our brutal encounter with the Militia.
‘One-Zero-Alpha, this is One-Two-Charlie …’ Abs spoke up for the first time, and I remembered his section were up on the hill, looking down upon us. ‘I can see all three sections, and am able to engage from the high ground …’
‘Do it!’ the platoon commander replied instantly, and seconds later there was a faint magnetic scream ahead of us as Two Section opened fire, raining darts onto the forest. Though they couldn’t see the enemy beneath the canopy, the Militia might be slowed by the rounds striking the ground at their feet. I doubted it, though. So far nothing had stopped them.
Finally we broke out of the forest, and the platoon hurried across the strip of farmland between the trees and the hill. Hill Kilo loomed above us, offering sanctuary from the pursuing Militia.
‘We’re all clear of the forest, Andy!’ Puppy announced over the section net.
I quickly relayed the message to Mr Barkley, letting him know that the last section was clear of the trees and that anything within the forest was fair game.
‘One-Zero-Alpha, roger! Stand by for close air support!’
Lumps of earth suddenly leapt up around us, and the crack of enemy darts sent us tumbling to the ground. For the first time, Skelton cried out in pain as he landed on his wounded leg.
RECCE (The Union Series Book 4) Page 23