RECCE (The Union Series Book 4)

by Phillip Richards

  ‘What the hell happened out there?’ the 2ic asked after a moment.

  ‘There were more Militia out there than we thought,’ I replied, ‘… a lot more.’

  ‘No shit,’ Puppy agreed. ‘That was a whole army!’

  ‘Thankfully for us, they’re not trained like one.’

  ‘Fair one,’ he conceded. ‘They were pretty rubbish shots, weren’t they? God knows how many casualties they must have taken from us! But they just kept coming. It was like they were smacked out of their faces on drugs or something.’

  ‘Maybe they were. They certainly weren’t behaving like we expected them to. It was like they were totally out of control. No commander would ever throw everything he had into a battle like that, but it’s exactly what they did. Are those the actions of a force ordered to disrupt our advance?’

  ‘It certainly disrupted us,’ Puppy said gloomily.

  ‘They weren’t disrupting us,’ I corrected, ‘they were beating us back. They were advancing into us.’

  ‘You think the Loyalists are counterattacking?’

  ‘I think the Militia are.’

  ‘Why? Do you think Helstrom found out about those missiles?’

  I opened my mouth to speak, but was cut short when one of the platoon commander’s group rounded the corner into our trench.

  ‘The boss has gone into the warren to talk about what happened with the Guard headquarters,’ he announced. ‘He wants all commanders to follow him down for a brief.’

  I nodded and looked back to Puppy. ‘I’ll take Myers with me as a runner - just in case I have to send a message back.’

  He nodded. ‘No worries, mate. We’re not going anywhere.’

  Myers and I were led through the maze of trenches to one of the few remaining warren access tunnels at the centre of Hill Kilo. The entrance had been blown wide open by the FEA during their assault into the warren, and it was now guarded by a pair of soldiers who sat slumped against the muddy walls with their weapons across their laps. They eyed us warily as we passed - as if they were deciding whether or not to let us enter the tunnel. Idleness prevailed, and neither soldier made any effort to stand.

  ‘Who are they guarding against?’ Myers whispered as we walked down into the dark tunnel. ‘There’s nobody on the hill but them and us.’

  ‘Maybe they’re guarding against us,’ I answered.

  The tunnel snaked downward, turning sharply to the left and right in order to make it impossible for smart missiles to be fired into it. Light sticks were crudely fixed to the wall by nails hammered into the rock, casting a blood-red glow across the tunnel. For a moment it felt as though I was back inside the claustrophobic warrens of New Earth, and the memory caused me to shudder.

  Occasionally we passed junctions in the tunnel system, each one guarded by another pair of FEA soldiers who regarded us with uncertainty.

  ‘This warren is massive,’ Myers commented, looking down at a diagram of the subterranean complex on his datapad.

  ‘It’s bigger than you think,’ our escort answered over his shoulder. ‘Our maps were made when the warren was first inspected for banned weapons and aircraft - just after the end of the war with the Alliance and before we let the president take control of Edo. Since then the whole place has been expanded, but apparently not even the FEA know the full extent of it. That’s why the sentries are posted everywhere - just in case there are some Loyalists tucked away somewhere …’

  Myers snorted. ‘That’s ridiculous. How can they not know the layout of their own warren?’

  ‘It’s not that ridiculous,’ I said. ‘The warren was probably controlled by the Guard before the Loyalists invaded Edo, and we all know how little the Guard like to communicate with the FEA. They might as well be different armies.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  We walked on in silence for a few minutes, descending deeper into the underground fortress.

  ‘I hate warrens,’ Myers uttered nervously. ‘It feels like we’re walking into hell.’

  ‘You and me both,’ I agreed.

  Ahead of us I noticed a series of junctions, several of which were guarded by Guardsmen. They appeared to be more alert than their FEA counterparts, looking us up and down as we approached, and several of them moved so that their bodies blocked the entrances they guarded, ensuring that there was no confusion as to which tunnel we could and couldn’t enter.

  ‘This is the Guard headquarters,’ our guide explained. ‘We’re right at the centre of the hill, just above ground level.’

  I chuckled bitterly. ‘It’s no wonder their CO doesn’t know what’s going on all the time - he’s hiding down here when the rest of his battalion are on the surface!’

  On closer inspection the junctions appeared to be the entrances to chambers being used by the Guard, each one sealed by an airlock similar to those used in an atmospheric tent - fully closed so that nobody could see inside.

  I wondered what was going on within the chambers, and what the Guard headquarters thought about the recent Militia activity and the failure of their companies to respond. Did they know what had happened? Or did they actually know more about the situation than we did?

  An assortment of troopers from across the platoon sat inside a disused chamber. Amongst them were the runners brought down by the other section commanders, as well as members of the two command groups and the volunteers left behind by B Company. They whispered quietly amongst themselves, exchanging stories and gossip with the new arrivals to the platoon.

  ‘Wait with them in there, mate,’ I told Myers, indicating the whispering troopers, before making my way over to the next chamber where my guide waited for me.

  This chamber had an airlock, and the guide unzipped its tent door before allowing me to step inside. Once the air had cycled, I removed my respirator and opened the inner door.

  The other commanders were waiting for me in a huddle at the centre of the chamber, and I quickly made my way over to join them, catching the eye of the sergeant major as I did so. He surprised me by giving me a small nod in greeting, but then I supposed that this was no time to harbour dislike for one another.

  The platoon commander looked across us all, the hardened lines of his face exaggerated by the glow of the light sticks fixed to the walls of the chamber. He had changed a great deal since I had known him, I realised as I studied him. There was a forlorn sadness in his eyes that sometimes betrayed his mask of confidence, and I wondered what went through his mind, particularly now that several of his men were injured and two were missing.

  ‘Everyone alright?’ he asked.

  A grumbled assent echoed about the chamber. We were all both physically and mentally exhausted from our battle in the forest. Corporal Stanton, sitting right next to the platoon commander, barely lifted his head, and stared at the ground as if in shame.

  My eyes flicked down to the section commander’s blood-stained leg. His combats hung loose where they had originally swollen to stem the bleeding of his wound. But it was the sorrowful look on his face that told of an injury far deeper than any flesh wound. He was devastated, and rightly so - I could think of no greater pain than knowing that troopers in my section were missing, possibly dead … or worse.

  I felt terrible for Corporal Stanton. Like Corporal Kamara, he had always been guarded whilst in my presence, perhaps even resentful of me, but that was long forgotten. He bore the scars of his section’s ambush, but not just on the outside, he was scarred on the inside too.

  ‘We all have a very good idea about what has happened over the past few hours,’ Mr Barkley began, ‘but I’m now going to allow Corporal Stanton to explain the sequence of events that ran up to our platoon extracting his section. Corporal Stanton, tell us what happened.’ His voice softened momentarily as he added, ‘Nobody is judging, we simply need to know what we’re up against.’

  We listened in silence as Corporal Stanton told us the harrowing story of the ambush against his section.

  Three Section had already
picked up electronic activity several hundred metres away before the ambush, and after waiting for a soak period of five minutes to make sure they hadn't been detected themselves, they had attempted to withdraw to a safer distance.

  'There were loads of readings,' Corporal Stanton recalled. 'I'm guessing a few of them had their weapons powered up, or perhaps they were using datapads to navigate … I don't know … I wasn't happy being so close either way - the chance of being detected was pretty high.'

  They took their time to withdraw, creeping through the forest in total silence. The plan was to move back a few hundred metres so that they could go firm again and listen - which made sense - I wouldn't have liked the idea of sitting so close to so many powered-up weapons either; a single snapped twig or stumble could easily result in a bloodbath.

  The section had managed to move no more than a hundred metres when the Militia opened fire from an unexpected direction to the west, their darts cutting through the forest like knives. One of the troopers was struck straight away, a steel dart punching through the flesh of his thigh and tearing a chunk of skin away as it exited out the other side.

  'There must have been a section of them lying in wait,' Corporal Stanton said.

  There were a few exchanged glances amongst the other commanders.

  'Are you suggesting that the Militia knew you were coming?' Mr Barkley asked, his brow raised in surprise.

  The section commander shrugged. 'Either that or they were ridiculously lucky. We walked right onto them.’

  Three Section reacted to the contact instantly, taking cover and opening fire with virtually every weapon system at their disposal in order to counter the shock of the ambush and regain the initiative. Grenades were fired from every rifle-fitted launcher, and mammoth guns sprayed the forest in furious bursts of steel. The section then began to withdraw, dragging their casualty away from the enemy.

  The aggressive response by Stan’s section allowed them to bound rearwards a few tens of metres before all hell broke loose.

  ‘There were loads of them,’ he said, almost disbelievingly. ‘Crosshairs were popping up everywhere, and the firepower … they must have been awful shots, because we should all be dead.’

  They probably were awful shots, I thought, remembering the overwhelming weight of fire from the Militia as we withdrew. If those were troopers firing, then we would have been cut to ribbons.

  Most magnetic weapons were designed to work in conjunction with a targeting visor, adjusting the flight path of the steel darts as they left the barrel in order to virtually eliminate human error. At distances of a hundred metres and above, the firer didn’t even need to be aiming directly at the target in order to achieve a hit so long as the visor could identify the intended target. At close ranges, however, the rifle couldn’t adjust the trajectory enough to compensate for the firer not aiming directly at the target. It sounds pretty daft, but a poorly-trained firer could easily forget that crucial fact, and actually forget to aim directly at the target at close range whilst under pressure, missing altogether - that was assuming that the firer had even bothered to configure his rifle to the visor in the first place.

  Some of the enemy darts still found their targets, though, and as Three Section fought its way rearwards more troopers were hit. One of them took a round directly into the abdomen, ripping its way through his abdominal muscles and causing him to collapse to the floor. The section had to pause whilst another man ran to his aid, and it was then that Corporal Stanton received a glancing blow to the thigh, and another trooper was hit in the arm.

  ‘We were hurting them,’ he said, his voice becoming agitated as he remembered the chaos of battle. ‘But they kept bounding forward, trying to close in for the kill. At one point they were within about ten metres. I thought we’d be fighting with bayonets, they were so close, but they were making easy targets of themselves and we hit loads of them. We got moving again and just kept on bounding backward. But they just kept on coming. It was like they were crazy or something. A few more of us got hit, and then the withdrawal became really hard to control.’ His head turned downwards. ‘That’s when we lost Butcher and Sanneh …’

  The mood became subdued as we thought of our missing comrades, and shared the pain that Corporal Stanton felt for having lost them. For me there was no greater fear than the thought of losing one of my own men - especially if one of them was captured. God only knew what the Militia would do to a captured trooper. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  I looked at the section commander’s face. In the dim glow of the light sticks his features appeared to be contorted by worry and by unbearable, inconsolable guilt. Nobody blamed him for losing two of his men. It was testament to the sheer courage, discipline and physical determination of his section that any of them had survived at all. Throughout their ordeal, his men had been struck by no fewer than eleven darts. The man who had become the first casualty was hit twice more during the withdrawal, as he was dragged backward and later carried upon his comrade’s shoulder, but despite being evacuated he was still able to fire several magazines of darts and grenades at the enemy. Struck by a dart himself, Stan had never faltered, leading his men to safety.

  Mr Barkley ended the silence, asking, ‘So you think that they knew you were coming, and were lying in wait for you?’

  Corporal Stanton shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Maybe we missed a sensor or something. Maybe they were watching us when we left Cellini –’

  ‘The FEA have scoured the area around the village for sensors,’ Mr Barkley interrupted dismissively. ‘I’ve watched them doing it. Plus any sensor would need to transmit its data. Even if the FEA missed one during their search, they would detect a transmission in seconds.’

  ‘Unless the transmission was by optical cable?’ Corporal Kamara offered. ‘We do the same thing all the time with our sensors. It makes them almost impossible to detect.’

  Mr Barkley pursed his lips, pondering over the idea. ‘That’s an awful lot of optical cable. You use – what – fifty metres of it for an OP? We’re talking about them reeling out several kilometres of it. They’d need more than one sensor as well in order to work out which way Three Section were going, the forest would have to be laced with them. I presume you didn’t just walk in a straight line?’

  Corporal Stanton frowned angrily at the suggestion. ‘Of course not! I put in several dog legs. I know how good the people here are at tracking.’

  ‘Do you think that you were tracked?’

  His brow furrowed as he thought about it, and then he shook his head in frustration. ‘I don’t know. All I know is that we followed an unpredictable route, and that we detected no transmissions throughout the patrol. If we could pick up a powered up rifle at a distance, then I’m pretty sure we could have picked up a network transmission.’

  Mr Barkley nodded slowly, lowering his head whilst he mulled over the information and what it might mean. We waited patiently, knowing as commanders the importance of taking such moments to think over the situation.

  ‘There is always the possibility that your encounter was merely a fluke,’ he said finally, looking up toward Stan. ‘You might have simply walked into the Militia, or perhaps you missed a sensor placed out near to their position … or perhaps an error in electronic or noise discipline gave you away. In some ways I hope that is the case, even though it might be upsetting for you to know that your ambush was avoidable.’

  Corporal Stanton gave a small nod. Avoiding detection was the name of the game in Recce Platoon - at least it was meant to be when we weren’t effectively being used as fighting troops. To any recce section commander, the thought that an ambush was a result of his own error, or a mistake made by his troopers, would be a heavy burden to bear.

  ‘There is then the possibility of you being detected by a sensor placed out around the village,’ the platoon commander continued. ‘Even if that were possible, though, the sensor wouldn’t be able to predict your route. Therefore an intricate - and therefore easily det
ectable - network of sensors would be required to track you remotely.’ His voice lowered. ‘Then there is the final, and most worrying, possibility … you were sighted from the moment you left the village, you were followed, and your position was communicated to the main force, possibly verbally –’

  ‘It was the rat within the Guard, wasn’t it?’ Abs interrupted. ‘You said it yourself … it looks like somebody could be working within their hierarchy. Whoever these people are, they saw Stan going out and saw the opportunity to get us all wasted. They followed him, and then told the Militia where he was. Stan gets hit, and we all pour out to his aid, only to get spanked by a whole battalion of the crazy bastards. Someone’s up to no good. Did you see the Guardsmen on that hill? Somebody had ordered them to just stand there and watch us die!’

  ‘Surely the Guard aren’t gonna go into the forest to chat with the Loyalists like they’re best mates?’ Corporal Kamara argued.

  Abs waved it away. ‘Whoever they are, they’re not gonna go out there with Guard uniform on, are they? Plus these guys are obviously already co-operating with the Militia. Maybe they have something to offer ...’

  I considered what Corporal Abdi was saying, and a sinking feeling in my gut told me that he was right. The ambush that had been prepared for Three Section was too convenient. It had been meant for all of us, and it had been crafted by somebody who knew an awful lot more about us and our movements than the Militia did. How were the Guard conspirators able to control the Militia? What did they have to offer them?

  Suddenly the answer materialised in my mind, and I swore at myself for not having realised it sooner.

  ‘We’re looking at this from the wrong angle, aren’t we?’ I said to the platoon commander. ‘The hidden missiles belong to Edo, not Europa. The Guard know where they are because they hid them.’

  Mr Barkley hesitated, and then nodded. ‘The missiles do belong to Edo, but very few people know where they are. They were hidden by the Guard years ago, just after the Alliance retreated from Eden. We had banned anything that could be used to undermine our dominance over the planet - including all aircraft other than dropships and all anti-orbital weaponry - so they hid the missiles to stop our weapons inspectors finding them. Most of the missiles were withdrawn by the Guard when the Loyalists invaded, but some were left behind. Very few people know about these missiles or their whereabouts.’